Chosen Destiny
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: In a dimension far away, two Lightning Knights attempt to summon Destiny’s Chosen One. They should have remembered that Destiny was said to be a rather temperamental old bird at the best of times. AU flavoured. Recently resumed for Anna's birthday.
1. Intersecting Destinies

**DISCLAIMER: **Own nothing; make no profit.

**A/N:** This fic was written as a birthday present for **The Lightning Flash**. I promised her a one-shot involving Kellamy; I kept one of those promises. Happy birthday, Anna!

**CHAPTER ONE: INTERSECTING DESTINIES**

_Once upon a time there was a green-eyed sorcerer, who was born human, a long time ago._

_He was destined to destroy and bring Chaos to the land, or so it was said. He was also destined to die. Twice._

_This is not his story._

_Once upon a time there was a green-eyed Lady, the daughter of a noble human family, and few recognised the powers she possessed._

_She died young. _

_It was said that Destiny, who was rumoured to be a rather temperamental old bird at the best of times, got rather upset about the Lady's premature decease._

_This is not her story either._

_-_

Lord Kellamy del'Fuerte, Dark Elf and gentleman mercenary, presently under the service of Chaos, drummed his heels against the wall in time to a repetitive series of notes he was humming under his breath, hoping he'd manage to annoy the two others in the room.

It really was a most tedious and inconvenient situation.

The young green-skinned man hung chained to the wall of a dark underground room, his wrists wrenched above his head and attached to a long wire. The other end of the wire happened to be attached to a machine sitting on the other end of the room, operated by a blonde woman while her younger companion watched.

"Chosen one," the man with spiked red hair said, slouching against the wall. "Hah."

The blonde woman, bending over the machine to stroke a few keys, laughed, not unkindly. "You always were too sceptical. This is our duty, and Destiny," she said with satisfaction.

She turned to Kellamy. "Stop that humming," she said. "We'd prefer it if you saved your strength, and so would you."

"As you wish, madam," the Dark Elf said, with some considerable hint of sarcasm. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

The redhead glared at him. "You can shut up for once," he said.

"Such stimulating company, as always," Kellamy responded, but fell silent after that.

The blonde woman turned back to the machine. "Almost ready," she said. "In five minutes will come the only point in time where the worlds align, until another three hundred and thirty-two years have passed. So Destiny has willed it."

"Yeah, yeah. Destiny," the redhead muttered. "You sure you want mine?"

The blonde woman smiled at him. "You just don't want the competition," she said pleasantly. "Don't worry. She'll be…well, a she, for a start, and they've done all the calculations down in Tech. She's Destiny's chosen one. Besides, almost all of mine appear to be desperately in love with his." She pointed to Kellamy, still hanging on the wall.

"Should I be flattered, madam?" he asked.

"No. She's a conniving, treacherous bitch. Not that different from you, really," the blonde said calmly, and pressed a few more keys, studying the screen. Flashes of activity appeared on it, brightly coloured figures moving so quickly as the camera's view shifted they were nothing but an indistinct blur.

The blonde turned to Kellamy. "By the Code of the Lightning Knights I am required to inform you that you have a fifty percent chance of survival, del'Fuerte," she said matter-of-factly. "Of course, it's only justice; you have been found guilty of blatantly and openly aiding and abetting Chaos."

"I collected a paycheck from her, you mean," said Kellamy. "I never aid or abet, blatantly or otherwise, unless it's a paying job; so hard on the constitution, you know how it is." The jaunty tone of his words belied the worried look on his face.

The red-haired man looked at a large dial set into the side of the machine.

"Hey—" he began.

"I know," the blonde said. "Merging in five." She moved her short plait over her shoulder to keep it out of her way, and ran her fingers over the keys.

The chains binding Kellamy's wrists began to spark as a current started to flow from his body to the machine. His body began to jerk and he closed his eyes, biting his lip to avoid crying out.

"Four."

_Sparx dodged a blow from Staffhead, bringing her sword up and preparing to fire._

"Three."

Kellamy's body arched, feet scrabbling for a purchase on the wall, face twisted in pain, a thin line of blood beginning to run down his chin.

_Sparx turned at the sound of a howl behind her, flinging herself away just in time to avoid the metal fist._

"Two."

He started to scream, the high piercing sound filling the room. The redheaded man put his hands over his ears.

_She placed two fingers in her mouth, whistling the call, looking hopefully overhead._

"One."

Kellamy collapsed back onto the wall, his eyes closed and face pale. The stream of blood continued to drip down his chin.

_Green flame hit her from behind, and she didn't know if she cried out or not…_

"Zero."

_Confused, spinning into space, into nowhere._

_Not the Portal _again_…_

-

The young red-haired woman materialised in the centre of the room, sword drawn, looking wildly around her for enemies.

"We mean you no harm," the blonde woman said. "Put that sword away, please."

The redhead looked at the other woman for a long moment, taking in the details of her uniform, and complied.

"Who are you?" she asked. "Should I know you?"

"Not exactly," the blonde woman said, smiling serenely. "I go by Louisa Lightning…."

"And I'm Tim, but people call me TNT because I'm a real blast to know," the red-haired man said, offering the newly-arrived woman his hand.

She shook it. "I'm Sparx, Lightning Knight," she said. She looked at the blonde woman curiously. "Are you related to Ace?"

"Not exactly," the woman called Louisa said for the second time.

"What do you mean?" Sparx said. _They probably brought me here on that machine; they at least owe me an explanation._ "Look, you got me here, tell me what's going on!"

"We'll get around to it," Louisa said. "I'm sure you're tired from the dimensional travel, and it's rather draughty down here."

Sparx missed the second half of that statement; she was staring at the man chained to the wall.

His delicate features reminded her of Lady Illusion, though it was clear he was of the opposite gender. He hung limply from the wall, his head bowed and his eyes closed, a bright red line running down his chin.

"Who's that?" Sparx said sharply, walking over to him.

"Lowlife scum," Tim replied.

"A convicted criminal, his life force extinguished in bringing you here," Louisa elaborated.

"He's alive," she said, touching the man's neck with a gloved hand and feeling a faint pulse. She saw the blood on his chin, where he'd bitten through his lip, and gently wiped the smear from his face.

She felt a slight spark of electricity between them as she touched him, and looked up into his face as his eyes opened. He stared mutely at her with dark green-flecked eyes, and she thought he was asking her for help.

She turned, glowering, to the other two.

"Let him go," she said. "This isn't right."

"You don't understand the situation," Louisa told her calmly. "Servant of Chaos. Convicted criminal."

"Office ornament," the man said, his voice raspy and strained. "They couldn't resist my pretty face…"

"I said let him go," Sparx said fiercely. "I know what's right and what's not. It's the Code, remember?" She tried to reach a hand to the chains, but she wasn't tall enough.

"No," Louisa said. "I have orders."

Sparx materialised her sword. "Not even criminals deserve _this_," she said.

"Don't waste yourself fighting for him," Louisa said, her voice still calm. "It's not your destiny."

"Forget about destiny!" Sparx yelled.

Tim drew a sword from a sheath on his back. "I wouldn't mind a little action," he said. He quickly glanced at Louisa, who had folded her arms across her chest, before addressing Sparx. "That is, if _you_ really want to fight for him—"

He was cut off as the wall behind him exploded.

Sparx coughed as the smoke cleared, looking up to see a large woman standing in the wreckage of the wall, her head surrounded by a frizzy cloud of greying hair. One of her eyes was bright red, and glowed fiercely in the dim room.

The chains holding Kellamy started to shudder and spark, and Sparx saw him land gracefully on the floor.

Louisa fired up her wrist cannons, and Tim pointed his sword at the woman.

The woman had a blade clutched in both her hands, a thin rapier that looked too small for her, and she threw it to the green-skinned man. He fumbled the catch, his hands discoloured from the time he'd spent chained, and only just managed to hold on to it.

Sparx powered up her sword. She wasn't sure which side she should be fighting on, but even if the green guy was evil, he didn't deserve what those two had done to him.

Under the woman's power—besides the glowing eye, Sparx noticed, metal covered most of the left half of her face and body; _a cyborg, then_—the machine shuddered, and electrical sparks headed for the direction of Louisa and Tim, who did their best to block them.

"You should have listened to your friend," the woman said. "Or is she?"

"She tried to help me," the green-skinned man said. He placed a clumsy arm over Sparx' shoulder, hurrying her towards the woman.

Louisa fired a wrist cannon, narrowly missing the woman, who had dodged just in time.

"Two of you in one place. They just don't make decent villains these days," Louisa said, preparing to fire again.

"Use my energy," Sparx heard the woman whisper. "Get us out of here…"

Tim lunged with his blade, and the green-skinned man brought his rapier up to block him just in time.

Sparx used her sword to shield from Louisa's blows. The three of them were stuck between the two Lightning Knights, doing their best to hold them off.

The machine exploded in a shower of blinding light.

"Now…" the woman whispered, and Sparx was aware of the green-skinned man gripping her shoulder as she felt her body disappear, ripped into a thousand pieces and reassembled again…

**A/N:** Feedback? Why yes please. How did you guess? Honesty is appreciated.


	2. Deceptions and Duels

**CHAPTER TWO: DECEPTIONS AND DUELS**

The three of them collapsed in the centre of a place that didn't look remotely familiar to Sparx, a largish underground cellar, lit by a few torches on the walls, old broken barrels littering the room.

"Hello?" Sparx said, her face underneath the green-skinned man's back, where she couldn't see anything but a boot she thought probably belonged to the woman. Hearing no reply, she began to disentangle herself, realising as she did so that both her companions were unconscious, though they both seemed all right aside from the energy drain. She placed a hand on the Dark Elf's pulse again, just to make sure.

She was still bent over him when she heard a familiar-sounding voice from behind her.

"Well, well. Looks like we got us a little Lightning Knight." The voice broke into laughter.

She turned quickly, and saw a familiar figure, shrivelled and wearing a shabby jester's cap.

"_Googler_?" she said, standing and materialising her sword.

"Big mistake, little Knight." Googler giggled, and turned himself into a spiked ball.

Sparx aimed a shot at him, ducking out of the way to avoid him.

Behind her, there was another snigger, and out of the corner of her eye she noticed the Rat, although his costume was more tattered than it'd been the last time she'd seen him.

"What's going on?" she said incredulously, backing away. "I thought this _wasn't _my world…"

The woman on the floor slowly got to her feet, and raised a hand.

"Stop it," she said to the minions, who backed down.

"You're the boss," the Rat said, rather sulkily.

The woman stared at Sparx, the red eye taking in the details of her uniform. Sparx felt a little intimidated by the tall, muscular woman with the glowing eye, but tried not to show it, glaring back at her.

"We don't take kindly to Knights around here," the woman said. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I don't know," Sparx said, frustrated; she'd been attacked twice in a very short time since coming to this world, and she was sick of it. "I just got here. Who are you?"

"Chaos," the woman said. She lifted her right fist, and sparks of electricity gathered around it. "I _destroy_ Lightning Knights."

"I'm Sparx, a Lightning Knight, and I don't know who you are," Sparx said, keeping her sword raised warily.

On the ground, the green-skinned man stirred.

"If you try to run, we will destroy you," Chaos said, and bent down beside the man.

"Feeling all right?" she asked, helping him to sit up.

"Nothing that will not heal, given time," he said. He lifted his hands and tried to massage some life into them. "I think my hands should recover, eventually…"

"They will," Chaos said firmly.

The green-skinned man looked up at Sparx. "You tried to help me," he said. "Why?"

"Because I thought you needed it," she said firmly, "and I'm a Lightning Knight. It's what we do."

Chaos spat on the ground. "Not to us, they don't. Do you know who she is, Kellamy?"

"She's Project Destiny," the green-skinned man—_Kellamy—_replied. "She's not from our world."

"Project _Destiny_?" Sparx asked.

Neither replied.

"Well, Knight," Chaos said. "Regardless of which world you come from, I will kill you if you betray us."

"I don't betray anyone. Knight, remember?" Sparx said, frustrated.

They both laughed, not pleasantly.

Chaos lifted her right arm, and a door Sparx hadn't even noticed opened in the cellar, electric current running along the hinges as a small cell opened.

"We'll interrogate you later," Chaos said. "In the meantime, we'll have to lock you up. It's a precaution; I'm sure you'll understand. Especially if you're _their _chosen one."

Sparx didn't lower her sword. "I tried to _help_ him," she said. "I don't know about the other two Knights, but I don't torture people. And I don't know if I'm a chosen one or not, but I _do _know that right now I'm starting to wonder if the Knights were right about you."

Chaos laughed.

"You're outnumbered, Knight. To surrender would be the most sensible move."

Behind her, Sparx sensed Googler and the Rat preparing to attack.

Kellamy looked at her apologetically. "We may be terrorists, but we will not harm you unless it becomes necessary. I thank you for standing up for me."

She sighed. "Fine. But you'd better do some explaining." She powered down her sword, and walked into the small room behind the door.

"If I could make a promise that you would trust, then I would swear that we will," Kellamy called as the door closed on her.

-

Louisa travelled down the winding staircase to the deepest basement of the Lightning Knight Headquarters, where the biggest secret of the Knights awaited her: the Lady Oracle, voice of Destiny.

Only the most senior Knights knew of the Lady, and there had been many times Louisa had regretted her own knowledge.

After giving her password and being scanned multiple times, her fingerprints, DNA, and retinas, Louisa finally entered the inner sanctum.

The Lady, Destiny's mouthpiece, appeared inside a large crystal ball, possibly a prison; in all the ten years she'd occupied this spot, she'd never been known to move outside it. She looked like she was sleeping, long hair flowing around her, her old-fashioned dress billowing in the smoke.

Louisa cleared her throat, and after a good five minutes the Lady finally opened her eyes.

"Which mere mortal dares to disturb my slumber?"

"Louisa," she said.

The Lady sniffed disdainfully. "And what does the meddling mortal have to say for herself?"

"We did exactly as you said with the interdimensional portal," Louisa said. "We got Tim's complement. And she ran away with del'Fuerte and his mistress. You told us that she would place the final nail in the coffin of the forces of Chaos!"

"I told you that to summon Destiny's Chosen One would lead to your good fortune. You fail to understand the dimmed and distant works of Destiny, whom I speak for," the Lady said, her voice taking on a lecturing tone. "Go, and do not come to me with your foolish frivolity."

Louisa folded her arms. "Tell me what I have to do."

"You will follow your Destiny," the Lady said. "What else?"

Louisa could have sworn there was a smirk in her voice.

"Then I will do right," she said. "The followers of Chaos will have no mercy from me."

She turned on her heel, and marched out of the room.

She thought she heard the Lady's tinkling laughter following her.

-

Sparx paced around the small room for what she thought was at _least _the fiftieth time. She kicked the wall moodily.

_I was sensible_, she thought. _I didn't attack them. Guess Ace would be proud of me, huh?_ She kicked the wall again. She estimated she'd been left alone for at least three hours, and had decided that she'd been stupid to trust Kellamy's words.

_He even _looks _a bit like Lady Illusion. Why do I get myself into these things?_

Outside, she heard something sounding like a cry, and listened in interest, forgetting her boredom.

There was a fight going on, she thought, shouts and yells and the walls shaking. Sparx looked around at the room which imprisoned her, hoping it wouldn't collapse on her.

The noises of the fight began to get louder, and Sparx realised they were entering the cellar.

She banged on the door.

"Let me out!" she called.

"Chaos…I was lucky we traced the teleport here…" Sparx heard a female voice say. _Louisa_, she thought. "Guess Destiny is on our side."

"…make our own destiny…" she heard someone else yell.

There was a loud screech.

Sparx kicked the door again.

She was flung to the back of the cell when the door exploded, and peeled herself from the wall to see a woman with a face covered in jagged scars and tattoos, plucking another explosive from her bandolier.

Sparx drew her sword.

"Which side are you on, Destiny's Knight?" the woman with the explosives called, flinging the explosive at a group of Knights who had tried to enter the cellar.

"My own, I think," Sparx muttered bitterly. Something about the woman appeared vaguely familiar, but she couldn't decide exactly what.

A figure vaulted in front of her in a somersault, his sword drawn, the Knight with the red spiky hair she'd seen before.

He grinned at her. "Louisa thinks you might want to join us again, now you've met Chaos and her gang face-to-face. You're Destiny's Chosen One."

"Think again, loser!" she snapped, raising her sword. "I make my own choices."

She lunged at him, and he blocked her sword with his own in a move that she herself liked to use.

"Who are you people anyway?" she said, pressing her attack. His style of fighting was similar to hers, but she thought that'd make him easier to predict.

"Lightning Knights. Defenders of order and justice. The custodians of this world. What did you _expect_?" Tim said. He grinned at her. "It's been a while since I had a decent fight. You're not bad…though I'm better."

He lunged at her suddenly, and Sparx found it hard to keep up with his flashing blade.

The woman's explosions had left a large crack in the cellar's floor, and Sparx found herself teetering at the edge of it.

Tim laughed. "You're no fun," he said.

She was running out of options, and quickly lunged to distract her opponent before trying to jump over the gap.

With both elbows scraping across the stone floor on the other side, Sparx brought her sword up to fire as quickly as possible, sending Tim back a few paces.

He smiled at her, teeth bared in a quick devil-may-care grin, and tried a similar leap, landing next to her on his feet after performing a neat somersault.

She stood just in time to parry his lunge, and their duel started again.

It had been a long day, and interdimensional travel never was easy on the constitution, and Sparx found herself quickly backed against a wall, with nowhere to go.

There was a _pop _of air behind her, and she saw the green-skinned man appear behind her opponent, calmly hitting him over the head with a fragment of a barrel.

"Enemy of my enemy," he said. "I don't think we managed to reach the part of formal introductions—Lord Kellamy del'Fuerte, at your service…"

"Get moving!" another voice called, the tattooed woman who'd thrown the explosives. She ran over to them, jerking a thumb at the group of Knights making their way towards them.

Reaching to the wall, the tattooed woman pressed something, and under their feet a trapdoor opened.

Sparx found herself falling down a long slide, into a deeper level, along a damp, hard surface. After what seemed like ages she fell into a basement, sprawling on the floor, and was harshly jerked up by the tattooed woman.

"I don't know who or what you are," she said, "but we _really _don't like Lightning Knights."

Across the basement, Chaos turned and stared at them.

"We lost Googler," she called, and on the back wall Sparx noticed the clown hanging suspended on a wall torch, drooping forlornly.

Chaos raised her right hand, and three small flyers sprung from the walls.

"Chosen one. Hmm," Sparx heard from behind her, and turned to see Louisa, preparing to fire.

"I _really _wish you'd stop carrying on about that," Sparx said, and fired her sword with all the rage she possessed.

Louisa fell back, though Sparx knew she probably wouldn't stay down long. Another Knight, dark-skinned with grey eyes—with a shock, Sparx thought she recognised him as Avraam Livingstone; she'd trained with him—drew a blaster.

The tattooed woman extended a tentacle from her back—_like Kilobyte_, Sparx thought wildly, _that's why she looked a little familiar—_and flung the blaster from the Knight's hand, ripping another explosive—_the last one_, Sparx noticed—from her bandolier.

A cloud of smoke shielded them from their pursuers, and Chaos flew over, the other vehicles in tow.

"We leave now," she said, wiping a black streak from her face. "What kind of terrorists don't have an escape route?" She looked over at Googler, and broke into a wild laugh.

"Get. Moving," the other woman said, and jumped on one of the vehicles, extending a tentacle to grab Sparx. Kellamy leapt onto the other spare vehicle.

"Hideout three, split up, Kila takes route fifty-four, Kellamy takes east-twelve, I'm on thirty-three," Chaos said. She clenched her right fist, and above them the ground opened.

The three of them swooped off in different directions, Sparx gripped in Kila's tentacle, as she saw Louisa beginning to fly from the rubble.

Louisa fired at them, and the tentacled woman attacked her while Chaos and Kellamy flew off.

"You've signed your own death warrant, Lightning," spat Kila. "One of us died today. You'll pay for that."

_Yeah, she really _does _remind me of Kilobyte_, Sparx thought.

"There'll be more deaths," Louisa said, swooping through the air and preparing to fire. "But do give us back our project, she's quite important to our Destiny."

Sparx felt the wind whistling through her hair as Kila tried to dodge Louisa's fire. Her arms were pinned to her side by the tentacle, and she could barely move.

_And I left the Flash behind, too. This is bad._

"You want her. We'll keep her," Kila said. "She's been fighting you, you know that?"

"Then we'll kill her, for aiding the servants of Chaos," Louisa said calmly. "Perhaps this is how Destiny will work itself out."

Louisa fired, and a shot hit Kila's flyer, sending Sparx and Kila into a spin. Sparx saw the ground rushing up towards her for a few tense seconds, a hideous flashing blur that she knew would easily kill her.

The blur of her descent slowed, and Sparx realised that Kila had somehow got the flyer back under control. The tattooed woman whipped another tentacle around to attack Louisa, catching her waist and starting an energy drain.

The Knight only laughed, and behind her Sparx saw the reason: Tim, flying up behind them on a flyer of similar design to Kila's.

"Let her go!" Tim called, his sword held in front of him.

"No problem," Kila said, and threw Louisa into him. The two Knights collided heavily.

Sparx saw three more Knights begin to take to the air, one of them Avraam.

"Time to make an exit," Kila muttered, and sped off before any of the Knights could start a serious pursuit.

**A/N:** Reviews appreciated. I accept anonymous reviews, and love honest feedback!


	3. Ghost to Glory

**CHAPTER THREE: GHOST TO GLORY**

Standing in the small, dingy attic that they were using as a temporary hideout, Chaos lit a small frame in a brazier.

"We will remember our own," she said, her face stone. "He died fighting."

"Makes me the last one left," the Rat said with a shaky voice. "Last one of _us_, after that magic spill at the zoo. Anvil and Pigface and the weird demon thing and Googler and me. Don't think there'll be any more magical accidents, not with the Lightning Knight rules as they are…"

"Enough, rodent," Kila said grimly, her large hands forming thick fists by her sides. She looked at Chaos. "We attack, now. Destroy as many as we can. They'll expect us to be in hiding. We can surprise them."

Chaos nodded. "We're in a convenient location," she said.

Out of the window, they could all see a tall tower set in the middle of the city, its side decorated with a golden lightning bolt.

Sparx stared at it. The Knights she knew in her own world didn't have any building that magnificent.

"The main headquarters of the Lightning Knights," Chaos said, noticing the direction of her gaze. "Are you with us, Knight?"

"Yeah," Sparx said, meeting the other woman's gaze. "I'll fight with you."

"We have the power to destroy you should this be a trap," Kila said. "But even Louisa is more subtle than this."

Chaos scowled. "Knights. Can't trust any of them."

Kila shot her friend a quick darting glance.

"I don't betray anyone," Sparx said steadily.

"She rescued me once," Kellamy said, fiddling with his long braid. He met Sparx' eyes with a serious look. "I trust you, whether or not you're Destiny's Knight."

"I haven't got a clue what you're talking about, but I won't break that trust," Sparx said. "Now, how are we going to manage to kick some butt?"

-

At Headquarters, Louisa Lightning prepared to make her report, dreading the reprimand she knew would shortly follow.

None of three officers sitting at the desk bothered to acknowledge her salute, and she began to narrate her statement with trepidation.

"As per the instructions of the Lady Oracle and on the basis of calculations performed and confirmed by Tech, I used the convicted criminal Kellamy del'Fuerte to summon the Chosen One," Louisa said, making her report as brief as she could. "Chaos turned up, and managed to abduct both of them. I traced the teleport. Shortly after that, I ordered a group of Knights to attack the facility. We reported one human casualty, and seven wounded. We were able to destroy both the Googler and the facility, however our main prey escaped. It appears that the Chosen One has chosen to forgo fighting at our side, though this of course would be the work of Destiny."

The man in the middle, a tall, ascetic, balding man with a long ponytail of white hair flowing down his back, nodded slowly. "It appears you're finding it difficult to annihilate the last of the terrorists threatening the order of our world. You consulted the Lady Oracle?"

"She told me no more than it was Destiny," Louisa said. "I acted in full accordance with regulations and her instructions."

The man on the left looked at her steadily with piercing blue eyes that had neither pupil nor white, and Louisa had to fight to meet his gaze. He'd been her mentor, once; like her, he was one of the few born with powers, and had taught her—along with Chaos, though Louisa didn't like to remember those times—to use hers. "You failed," he said. "Doubtless Destiny is on our side, but you should have been able to eliminate the terrorists, Louisa."

The woman on the right, pale-skinned and wrinkled, nodded. "Chaos and her gang should not have escaped. I would suggest consulting the Lady again, and making preparations for another attack. Have you any information on their current whereabouts?"

"I have given all appropriate data to Intelligence," Louisa said steadily, "and I'm waiting on a reply."

"Keep doing all you can," the man in the middle said. "We'll be waiting on your success. Dismissed."

Louisa saluted, and marched out.

-

They'd planned to attack at nightfall, to swoop down out of the clouds and blast as many as they could. Kellamy's capture had given them enough information about the facility to know approximately where to strike.

"Get in, get out," Chaos said. "I'll get what I can from their machinery, the Rat acts as observer and decoy if necessary, and Kellamy wreaks as much havoc as he can."

"I'll watch your back," said Kila, "and the Knight can come with me."

Chaos nodded. "After we've blasted what we can and I've got the information we need, we leave. I should be able to block the scanners so they won't trace us."

"And what's Plan B?" Kellamy asked. "Assuming, of course, that we possess a Plan B…"

"We run as far and as fast as we can," Chaos said. "Hideout Seven, and if worst comes to worst, we seek shelter with your people. I won't pretend we aren't desperate." Her lips pursed. "There's only four of us left. We do as much damage as we can while they're not expecting it. Better than waiting like rats in a trap for them to come to us." She looked at the Rat. "With apologies to you, of course."

"Way to insult a valuable ally," he said with a sniff.

"Go fly over the area," Chaos said. "Report back to us in an hour."

The Rat departed through the window, and Chaos stared at the darkening sky outside. "We power up as best we can—the charges hidden here should serve us for tonight—and attack as soon as possible."

Kila grinned. "Sounds good to me," she said. "Let's spread some destruction."

-

Inside the Lightning Knight headquarters, Louisa raised an eyebrow at the rodent she was staring at.

"You're trying to betray your side?" she asked. "That's interesting. Why?"

"There are four of us left," the Rat said. "We can't win. It's simple, Knight. I tell you Chaos' plans, and you let me live. And you pay me an obscene sum of money."

"How much do you want?" Louisa said.

"I think…oh, three thousand would be fair compensation."

Louisa laughed pleasantly. "You're joking," she said. "I'll offer you five hundred; that's about as much as I can afford from my team's budget. Sorry."

"Two thousand," the Rat said firmly. "Not going below that."

Louisa powered up her wrist cannons. "That's all right. If I destroy you, there will be only three supervillains left. We'll get to them in time."

"You don't know how powerful they are," the Rat said desperately. "Kila's off the scale, really, more powerful than you, and Chaos controls machinery and the elf's a teleporter, and the Knight's joining them and they have powerups in their hideout and they're attacking tonight…"

"Go on," Louisa said, lowing her wrist cannons and smiling at him. "Keep talking, and I might reconsider my offer."

"They're attacking this building tonight. They think you're not going to expect that," the Rat said.

"Then I'll just have to prove them wrong, won't I?" Louisa said, still smiling, and suddenly fired at him.

The Rat collapsed, falling onto the neatly polished floor.

Louisa pressed a button on the wall, and spoke into it.

"Waste Disposal? Lightning here, room four-thirty B. There's some trash here I need you to incinerate…"

-

Sparx finished charging up, sighing as she felt her energy levels increase to full power. She turned to Kellamy, who was sitting nearby, braiding his hair.

"Googler was evil, in my world," she said.

Kellamy sighed. "He was not the most intellectual of underworld denizens, but he was brave, and fought for us. There will be no more like him, since the latest Knight regulations…"

"Sorry," Sparx said.

"That…reminds me," Kellamy said. "I promised you an explanation, though there's not much time…" His fingers twisted through his hair, taming it back into the braid. His hand movements seemed a little stiff, and Sparx wasn't sure if he was still feeling the effects of the chains or not.

"Keep talking," she said.

"The Lightning Knights summoned you here because they believed you would help them. That you represented the force of Destiny, and that you'd help them finally finish us off. I believe you're TNT's complement, from your universe…"

"Complement?"

"You look like him. Much prettier, of course," Kellamy added with a smile. "I think you are…who he might have been, if things had been different."

"Right, so…it's like an alternate universe thingie?" Sparx stared at him. "You look a lot like someone I know from my world, you know."

"Is it a flattering comparison?" Kellamy asked.

"Not really…though you're a lot more talkative than her, and have more hair," she said. "And you're…not evil."

"I am a highly unscrupulous terrorist and mercenary," Kellamy said, "and it is the Knights who stand for order on our world, the brave defenders of good and justice and righteousness..."

"Do they usually torture people?"

"No. They tend to prefer to deal clean deaths, unless they have some reason. More efficient that way, you see. They didn't get to rule this world by being impractical, after all."

"They _rule_ your world?"

Kellamy looked surprised. "Yes. We're the last marauding supervillains that we know of."

"On our world, there's a saying that you have to be idealistic, abnormal, or stupid to be a Knight," Sparx said. "There aren't many of us, and we have our hands full trying to fight various supervillains trying to take over the world…"

"Which are you?" Kellamy asked.

"Abnormal," Sparx replied, materialising her sword briefly. "And I like the action." She blinked as she remembered what she'd left behind. "I have to return to my own world," she said. "There's just Ace and me and Random, and we have to win or else Lord Fear will take over the world."

"We don't have the power to take you back," Kellamy said. "Well, actually, we do, but none of us can afford to use our life force."

"Then I'll fight with you," Sparx said. "I could use the action."

"We can promise you action, Knight." Kellamy threw his completed braid behind his back. "You never told me your name, by the way. I hope it's not Timothiana or something along those lines?"

She laughed. "It's Sparx," she said, and held out her hand.

-

Kila stared into the sky. "He's not back yet," she said.

Chaos lifted her arm, and a small screen on the wall beside them lit up. The picture was fuzzy, but the voices were clear enough.

"…the Rat was the last known magically enhanced beast created by the well-known sorcerous disaster twelve years ago," the announcer said. "Since then, the Knights have been working to promote higher security and order in their world, and no further sorcerous accidents have been known due to tightened regulations. In latest news, a petty theft, the fifth this year, has been easily and quickly halted…"

Chaos flicked it off. "They caught him," she said, "and shot him down."

"Something else they'll pay for," Kila said, her tentacles curling around her.

"This could be our last chance to fight," Chaos said.

"Then we'll take as many of the bastards with us as we can." Kila bared her teeth in a half-smile. "Let them know we existed."

-

Louisa stood in the middle of the observation room, looking at a large screen showing the sky outside.

"A collective teleport would use too much energy," she said. "If the Rat was telling the truth, they'll try the sky."

Beside her, Tim shrugged. "I guess you're right," he said. "Let me go out there."

"You'd warn them," Louisa said. "Subtlety's never been your strong point. But don't worry. You'll get your chance to fight."

-

The four of them swooped down out of the clouds as silently as they could, approaching the giant skyscraper.

Kellamy turned to Sparx, who was sharing the flyer with him. "Going now," he whispered, and teleported off, leaving her to control the vehicle.

Chaos landed on the building's roof, and split the top hatch open, sparks striking off it.

Alarms started to go off as the three of them flew inside, but they ignored them.

"I can get into the control centre from the third room to the right," Chaos said. "Watch my back."

-

Louisa smiled.

"Teams Rain and Wind, attack," she said into her phone.

"What do I do?" Tim asked.

Louisa pointed to the screen where Kellamy had teleported in and was doing his best to fight, his blade flashing.

"Find him," Louisa said. "Might be tricky. He'll be moving around a lot."

Tim grinned. "Thanks," he said, saluting before running out.

The screen in front of Louisa crackled, and the face of the white-haired officer appeared.

"Sir," Louisa saluted. "I tripled the patrol numbers, and made preparations for the current attack. Are you safe?"

"We will not be attacked," he said. "We have guards, locked doors, and teleportation shields. What's your plan?"

"We've managed to lure the terrorists onto our home ground," Louisa said. "This is our chance to destroy them."

"I'm getting the power readings," the man said. "You will need all the resources you have. You and Tim are the best we've got…"

Louisa saluted. "I've sent Tim out to hunt the Dark Elf, and once I'm sure the others aren't going anywhere, I'll fight them."

"Do so," he said. "What about the Chosen One?"

"Her as part of the final destruction of Chaos is good enough for me," Louisa said. "It's Destiny, even if not quite as we envisioned it."

The man laughed, and made the sign of the hexagon.

"I'll leave it to you, Louisa," he said.

"Your confidence is not misplaced, sir."

-

Chaos finished with the machine, covering her tracks and causing enough equipment malfunctions for their attackers to have some serious problems.

She ran out, noticing Kila halfway down the hallway, standing to fight against at least ten Knights, and Chaos stood by her side.

"I got it," she said quietly, taking a blaster from her belt and firing, reaching for a phone in her other hand.

"Kellamy. Get out," she said into it.

"You get out of here," Kila said. "I can hold them off."

She lashed a tentacle into the hallway, clearing a distance.

"You have what we came for."

A Knight fired, hitting Chaos' upper arm and severing it from her body, and she gasped, blood pouring out of the wound.

Kila grabbed Chaos' fallen blaster and fired, cauterising the wound.

"Another…body part gone…" Chaos muttered, swaying on her feet.

Kila threw her flyer at Chaos. "Don't make me do this for nothing. Leave here, with all the information you can."

"Need to stay with you," Chaos said, taking the blaster from Kila with her metal hand and firing it again. "Won't leave you."

Sparx used her sword to beat her way through the crowd of attackers, to stand beside Chaos and Kila.

Avraam drew twin sais, and she stared at him.

_I _know _him, _she thought, _we used to be friends, he's polite and likes reading old poetry books and sat next to me in blades training…_

She blocked his attack with her sword just in time.

_Not my world_, she reminded herself,_ not the Avraam I know…_

Another Knight attacked, a thick-bodied man wielding a battleaxe—_she thought he looked like a prison guard she'd seen once, in her own world—_and Sparx fought as best she could, quickly using her blade to cut across his torso, and he fell back.

Avraam threw a sai at Chaos, and Sparx used her sword to blast it to pieces just before it hit the woman. Chaos flung her a brief look of gratitude, and the battle continued.

-

Kellamy heard Chaos' words from the device he'd had strung on his belt, duelling TNT in what he thought was probably the Lightning Knight mess hall.

He felt sudden pressure as someone grabbed his braid from behind—_a girl Knight, younger than him, with curly hair and an apparent ability to create small fires—_and he struggled, aiming a kick into her ribs, quickly grabbing the end of his braid to stop the small blaze.

"Fairy," TNT said. "Anyone ever tell you long hair gets in the way?" He used the opportunity to press his attack, driving Kellamy across the overturned tables in the hall.

"Anyone tell you that you possess the manners of a leprosy-infested ape?" Kellamy jumped for the flyer. "We'll continue this later…honey."

Before Tim could react, Kellamy had disappeared in a teleport, and the Knight ran to find him.

-

Sparx found herself standing next to Chaos, sheltering behind a strut in the hallway, while the other woman fired a blaster from her metal hand to stop the Knights coming too close. They could see Kila, still fighting, though they'd been separated.

Kellamy appeared above them, his sword raised.

"Coming?" he said. He looked at the approaching Knights, worry on his face.

At Chaos' command, a flyer appeared, though the woman looked exhausted.

"Both of you. Go," Chaos said. "Escape while you still can."

A bolt from a blaster hit the second flyer, which started to spin irregularly.

In front of them, Kila fell. Sparx couldn't see what happened to her.

"She said to go…" Chaos said. "I'm not letting this go for nothing." Chaos stabilised the flyer, and shoved Sparx onto it. "I need to stay."

Sparx gasped at the flyer's irregular movements, unable to control it.

"We'll need you…" Kellamy said, glancing briefly at Sparx. "You can live to fight another day…"

Sparx took Chaos' remaining arm and helped her onto the flyer, using her powers to keep it balanced.

She tried to fire bolts from her sword to where she'd last seen Kila, but they didn't make any difference as the three of them made their way out of the building.

Chaos brought open the roof—she'd calibrated the building's electrical facilities to cater for _them_; the Knights were finding it hard to pursue them.

Louisa appeared in front of them, smiling.

"It's been some time since we got to talk, Chaos," she said. "Too bad it won't happen today."

She fired, and Sparx was just able to use her bodyweight to manoeuvre the flyer out of the way.

"We don't have time for this," Kellamy said, and reached to his boot in one swift motion, drawing out a small dagger and throwing it at the Knight.

It hit her in the shoulder, and as Louisa fell back the group used the opportunity to make it into the cover of the clouds, desperately trying to escape, disappearing into the night as the pursuit went on.

-

Kellamy took Chaos' metal arm, helping the older woman to remain standing, in the drab, darkened basement of the hideout they'd fled to. It was an old house, in the outer areas of the city, one Chaos had used her powers to take out an electronic lease.

"Took Kila," Chaos muttered. "I ran. Left her. With them."

"You got the information?" Kellamy asked sharply.

"Yes," Chaos said, resting her metal hand on the wallscreen. Information scrolled across it, moving more quickly than Sparx' eyes could follow.

"A map," Kellamy said, pointing to a fragment spooling across the screen. "That'll help."

"Not much good," Chaos said. She swayed on her feet, and Kellamy and Sparx helped her to sit down.

-

"We've got her locked up," Avraam Livingstone said, saluting Louisa. "It took us a while; her power readings are extremely high. And we know that Chaos is missing an arm."

"Which one?"

"The…human one."

"I was there when she lost the first arm," Louisa said thoughtfully. She had a dagger's hilt sticking out of her shoulder, Avraam noticed, but she didn't seem to realise. "It was for a more noble cause, though it wasn't long after that she chose to desert. But no matter. Terminate Kila, and dispose of the arm, of course," Louisa said. "Well done."

A voice crackled from the screen behind her.

"Override one of those orders, Knight," the blue-eyed man—Louisa's old mentor—said. "We with powers aren't so common as to be wasted."

Louisa nodded. "She _is _powerful," she said. "And her friends will come after her. Should we take advantage of that?"

The man laughed. "_Now _you're thinking," he said. "They are powerful. But time—and Destiny—are on our side."

-

Chaos sat down, her remaining hand shaping a second prosthetic out of a piece of scrap metal. Her face was expressionless and cold.

"Are you sure she's gone?" Sparx said.

"I cannot hope," Kellamy answered.

"Yeah, but they didn't kill _you_," Sparx said. She turned to Chaos. "Did you actually see her?"

"No," Chaos said.

"Then you don't _know_," Sparx said hopefully. "We can wish, right?"

"The price of hope is too high," Kellamy said, leaning against the wall with closed eyes, exhaustion drawn on his features.

Sparx fiddled with the screen on the wall, and Kellamy watched it with mindless eyes.

It took a while for the public announcement to appear.

"It is a trap," Kellamy said. "But they do not know that we know _exactly _where to go."

"The most secure cells are _there_," Chaos said automatically, the wallscreen lighting up to illustrate her point. "Can you take me in a teleport?"

Kellamy shook his head. "I'm not going to take you," he said. "It will be easier to transport her, and you have only one arm for now. But if we know where to go we should manage. It is a chance."

Chaos stared at him for a long moment, and nodded, falling forward into a dead faint.

-

They appeared together facing a steel door in a darkened room. Sparx disentangled herself from Kellamy, and looked up at him.

"Through there?" she whispered.

Kellamy shook his head, and she thought there was a bemused expression on his face, shadowed in the gloom.

"You took a wrong turn," came a feminine voice from behind them, and they both turned suddenly, hands gripping the hilts of their weapons.

Their eyes were quickly growing used to the dark, and they could make out a large crystal ball in the centre of the room. It was filled with smoke, and inside floated a luminous woman, semitransparent and greenish.

"I am the voice of Destiny," the woman said. "I knew that you would arrive, Kellamy del'Fuerte and Sparx, to search for your friend; and it was I who ordained that you would be summoned to this destination, Lightning Knight."

"Well, madam," Kellamy said, sweeping her a bow. "Could you possibly tell us just how to find the friend you mentioned?"

"I could," she said, and smirked. "But whether I will is another question."

Sparx rolled her eyes. "Right. What do you want?"

"Free me," the woman said. "Blast me out of this and I will help you. My powers are limited, and I am not real enough to do any damage."

"Why should we believe you?" Kellamy said. "You told the Knights to use me to summon her, didn't you?"

"And she helped you and your friends to fight," the woman told him. "It's the way of Destiny."

"That's still not a good reason to believe you," Sparx said.

The woman held up a hand. "I swear on the soul I gave away a long time ago that I will show you to your friend."

Kellamy shook his head. "Not good enough."

"I swear on the powers that were once within my possession that I will keep my word."

"Still not good enough."

"_Fine_," she said. "I swear on the most sacred oaths of the Sixth Dimension, on the Powers I am beholden to and any power I currently wield, and on my own death, and on my noble family name, that if it is within my ability I will help you."

She glared at them. "Satisfied?"

"Maybe. What _is_ your family name?" Sparx said.

"That is the first time in three hundred and thirty-odd years someone has asked me that question," the ghost said thoughtfully.

"Well?" Sparx said, after a long pause.

"I am Lady Vincenza du Lac, daughter of a noble family when I was alive," she said. "Otherwise known as the Lady Oracle, voice of Destiny. Now, are you going to get me out of here or not?"

Sparx looked at Kellamy. He shrugged.

"Fine," Sparx said, and blew apart the crystal ball with her sword.

Vincenza sighed with relief. "So cramped in there. Incorporeal I may be, but that does not imply _complete_ insensitivity to my surroundings…"

"We're going to rescue Kila," Sparx said, cutting her off. "Where is she?"

-

**A/N:** Thank you for the reviews, **Flash** and **Hyperpsychomaniac**! I LOVE feedback.

**Flash:** Sparx is special because Destiny said so. :P


	4. Spectral Rescue

**CHAPTER FOUR: SPECTRAL RESCUE**

Kellamy and Sparx huddled into the doorway, both wrapped in his dark cloak, waiting for Vincenza to materialise.

She floated up through the floor, appearing in front of them.

"This is a foolish decision," she said. "As I told you, you should leave before you hurt yourselves, and now that _would _be a shame."

There was a hint of sarcasm in her tone, Sparx thought. "We're not," she said. "Were you seen?"

"Very few humans can see through walls," the ghost said, smirking.

"Right, where do we go here…"

Sparx stopped as she felt Kellamy's hand pressed over her mouth. There were footsteps coming up the hallway, and Vincenza melted into the ground again.

Kellamy grabbed her, pushing them both back against the doorway, and Sparx felt an odd shimmering sensation around them.

"Stay still," Kellamy whispered. "I'll try to hide us…"

The guard's footsteps approached, sounding horribly loud in the deserted cellblock. Sparx held herself as still as she could, hoping they wouldn't be seen. Kellamy seemed to be doing something to blend them in to the wall, like she'd seen Lady Illusion do once or twice.

The Lightning Knight was young, Sparx noticed, with a wide, open face, and he passed by them facing forwards. He didn't look to the side, and after what seemed like an eternity the footsteps finally faded.

Sparx and Kellamy melted away from the wall, the cloak falling away from them, and she heard him sigh in relief.

Kellamy turned to the nearest door, and pulled something small and silver from his braid, sliding it into the lock and twisting it.

Vincenza appeared again, and Kellamy looked at her.

"This _is _the right door, correct?" he said.

"That would depend on your definition of 'right'," the ghost said, with a smirk.

Sparx rolled her eyes. "Whose side are you on anyway?" she said.

"Destiny's, of course," Vincenza said, just as the door clicked open.

Kellamy hurried through, Sparx following him.

"You'd _better_ be right," Sparx muttered in Vincenza's rough direction.

-

"You think they'll just keep on coming back, don't you?" Tim said, sitting next to a bunch of computer monitors, his chin resting on his elbow. "Until we _finally _win."

Louisa ran her hands over a keyboard, carefully scrutinizing the monitors.

"It's logical. They'd try to _rescue_ their comrade," she said. "We'd do the same, provided we were under orders."

"Yeah, I know," Tim said. He pulled a dagger from his boot with his other hand, and tossed it idly in the air, easily catching it. "Just so long as you promise me some action."

Louisa smiled benignly at him. "I think I can promise that, my friend," she said.

Tim turned to grin back. "You did know you still have a dagger in your shoulder, right…?"

-

"Quiet down here," Sparx remarked, walking past another row of sealed steel doors, next to Kellamy, using his cloak as partial cover and trying to avoid the occasional swivelling camera.

"Too quiet," he said dourly. "Know anything relevant about the Knight prison system?"

"Not much," she whispered back. "I was never a guard. Do they use energy fields?"

"Monitoring cameras, mostly on the inside, and steel doors, I believe," Kellamy said, "though I've had no personal experience."

"It's a bit different, then," Sparx said.

"Third from the right, here…" they heard a ghostly whisper.

Kellamy turned and walked down the passageway, Sparx following him. The door was heavily sealed, and Sparx noticed Kellamy using about three different lockpicks he'd pulled from his braid before it finally clicked open.

"Draw your sword," Kellamy whispered, holding his in his right hand, and Sparx followed suit as the Dark Elf kicked the door open.

Alarms started to go off, and Sparx quickly powered up her sword. Kila had been chained to the wall, and Sparx fired off four bolts in quick succession, destroying the manacles.

The older woman shook herself loose, uncoiling her tentacles from behind her and quickly moving over to them.

"It's a trap," she said, lifting her voice over the sound of the alarms. "Idiots. Let's move while we still can."

"A simple thank-you would have done," Sparx muttered, joining the other two in an effort to get out of there.

They'd made it to the end of the passageway, alarms bleeping and lights flashing, when another door closed in front of them. They turned for a second, to see if maybe they could go back another way, but a second door slammed shut.

Kellamy tried to fiddle with the lock again, but it didn't seem to be working.

"Allow me," Kila said, and pushed—there was no other way to describe the motion—at the door with her tentacles, twisting the metal and ripping it off the frame, grunting with the exertion. Sparx stared.

_Well, she does _look _like Kilobyte_, Sparx reminded herself.

A figure jumped in front of them, a sword raised, and Sparx realised it was TNT again, the red-haired Lightning Knight who had more to do with her than she really wanted.

"This is, what, the third time recently?" he said to Kellamy, grinning. "Habits are hard to break, I guess."

Kellamy raised his own sword, and moved in. "Did you come without a team to back you up? You think you're brave, don't you…human?"

"It doesn't take bravery to fight you." They were both expert fighters, Sparx could tell, blades leaping through the air as they tried to duel each other to a standstill, completely absorbed in testing each other's skill. There was something personal, too, about their grudge, and Sparx tried hard not to think about herself and Lady Illusion.

Kila lashed out a tentacle, and flung Tim into the wall. Kellamy looked up at her, startled.

"Why…"

"We take as many with us as we can," Kila said. "It's a trap. You knew that…"

She curled the tentacle back towards the fallen Knight, wrapping it around his neck and starting an energy drain. He struggled as though he was a pinned butterfly, helpless and squirming, but there was no shade of mercy on Kila's face.

Sparx grimaced, and didn't see the bolt of blue flame hit the other woman on the back.

TNT struggled to rise, hand around his throat.

"Thanks, Lou…" he got out.

"Don't _bother_ with the last-minute escape," said Louisa. She still had the dagger in her shoulder, Sparx noticed, incongruously. "Accept this was a trap."

Avraam stood behind her in the door that had suddenly opened, both sais clutched in his hands.

"Three of you, three of us," Kellamy said quietly. "Are you really that shortstaffed, or are you finally starting on honour versus efficiency?"

Louisa laughed lightly. "Efficiency's good," she said, preparing to fire again.

There was a sudden beeping noise, and a voice echoed around the room from Louisa's phone.

"Ma'am, the Lady's gone, disappeared!"

Louisa clicked it off. "I'll leave that. Evidently Destiny has chosen to play itself out. Now where were we?"

"About to destroy _you_," Kila spat, and ran towards her enemy.

"Hey, Knight," Sparx heard, and turned to see Tim staggering towards her, sword raised. "We're supposed to be...related. You think you can beat me?"

Sparx laughed. "Loser," she said, and attacked.

Tim grinned at her. "Did you ever learn this particular move?" he asked, and in a complicated lunge sliced across the front of her turtleneck. He'd cut the skin, and Sparx felt the sharp pain, the shallow cut somehow hurting more than the deeper wounds she'd received on other occasions.

There was a sudden cry, and Sparx noticed dimly, struggling to hold her own against Tim, that behind her there was something reddish-brown staining Kila's outfit, and that Avraam wasn't holding one of his sais anymore.

Tim shook his head. "Walk into a trap and what do you expect…" he said. "And I thought _I _was impulsive."

Sparx didn't dare to look behind her, occupied in fending off Tim's blade. The young man was slightly stronger than her, she realised, and seemed to have most of her moves under control.

"Chaos will kill you," Kellamy said, his voice sounding shakier than Sparx had ever heard it.

Sparx could see out of the corner of her eye that he was looking down at a fallen Kila.

_She's dead, they destroyed her,_ Sparx thought desperately, letting more rage than she would have thought possible to show for an alternate Evil run through her as she continued to fight.

_I have the Sword of Jacob. This guy doesn't seem to..._ Sparx thought, and stepped back a pace. Before Tim could react, she'd fired up her sword, sending a lightning bolt into his shoulder.

_Should hold him for a while…_ she thought, grimly, as she turned to find Kellamy trying to fight Avraam, Louisa watching complacently.

A woman's scream rang out, piercing and shattering, and Sparx grimaced, noticing that her foes had also reacted, placing their hands over their ears and looking around to find out who was screaming.

_The ghost. Vincenza. It's gotta be._

"C'mon!" She grabbed Kellamy's hand, hustling him away. The door was still open, she noticed; if they could just _run_… "This is the LAST final escape I'm going to try, I swear…"

Kellamy looked at her, and nodded, running along with her.

**A/N:** Yes, Flash, it _is_ mostly because Kellamy thinks it's attractive. See? He DOES have faults! Reviews, as always, appreciated.


	5. World Out Of Joint

**CHAPTER FIVE: WORLD OUT OF JOINT**

The screaming continued, seemingly having more of an effect on the Knights than on their foes. The battle seemed paused, the three Knights desperately trying to shield their ears from the awful sound.

"We can't leave her..." Kellamy glanced back at the figure on the floor with part of a sai sticking out of its back.

"She's dead. No time. Run!" Sparx grabbed his hand.

She hurried him down the passageways, trying to remember the way they'd come in and navigate through the Knight dungeons. Though there was familiar-looking insignia decorating the walls, it didn't remind her of home in the least. The screaming continued, making it difficult to think, and Sparx concentrated on finding a way out of there.

"Down this one," Kellamy muttered, jerking his head to the left, and she followed him.

They were halfway down another metal-walled passageway when the screaming stopped, and they stared around briefly at the silence.

- -

Louisa rubbed the side of her face. "What _was_ that?"

"Hostile sonic vibrations," Avraam said, looking rather pale. He reached out a hand to a wall to steady himself. "I don't know what..."

Tim kicked the wall in frustration. "Lost them again. It can't be the Knight's powers, right?"

Louisa shrugged. "I'd assume not," she said. She reached for her communicator. "The intruders are assumed to be heading down south wing; should be going towards exit ninety-three. Head them off at D-14. Red alert to all guards. And wear earplugs if possible. Message to the science team: track any unusual sonic vibrations within the past five minutes." She flicked off the device, not bothering to hear any responses to the order. "All right, Avraam?" she said.

"Just that _sound_." He winced.

Louisa nodded. "Lend me a sai, please."

Avraam shrugged, and pulled one from a leg sheath to hand to her.

"We set our trap. We have no use for bait," Louisa said, kneeling down beside Kila and feeling for a pulse. "You missed her heart, Avraam," she said, and stabbed the sai through her opponent's body in one efficient movement. The body convulsed, and was still.

Tim shrugged. "Well, if you two have given up here, I'm going to see if the guards need any help."

"He's a teleporter," Avraam muttered. "We might have already lost them."

"We probably did," Louisa said. She looked thoughtful. "To know the source of those unusual sonic vibrations would be helpful, though. I wonder if our favourite renegades have found new allies? From the individually directed nature of the scream I'd guess_ sorcery _of some sort..." She said the word as though it was a curse, scowling at the thought.

- -

They suddenly stopped as the ghost appeared out of the ceiling in front of them.

"You said you would help us and you were Destiny," Kellamy said fiercely. He released Sparx' hand to curl his own into a fist. "She's dead."

"I _warned _you," the ghost said, "and it is thanks to me that you both remain alive. And I told you I was the _voice _of Destiny rather than the entity herself. Being alive is wasted on the living, ungrateful little..."

"Shut. Up." Sparx said. She couldn't stand to listen to the ghost's ramblings, not in the middle of yet _another_ last-minute escape. "Which way's out of here?"

Vincenza glared at her. "That way," she said, pointing, "but a team of Knights are also coming along that path."

"Then we'll go that way." Sparx set off down the passage on the other side, and tried to open a door. "Can you get this unlocked, Kellamy?" she said.

He quickly slid a lockpick from his braid to get the door open as Sparx watched. She'd assumed the silver bits in his hair were some kind of ornament, before, but it was just as well he had them.

"Leads to the basement," he muttered. "How much energy do _you_ have left?"

"Enough," Sparx said. "What for?"

"There they are!" a cry came from further down the passageway, and Sparx looked up to see a group of Knights running towards them.

The door slid open, and Kellamy and Sparx hurried into it, slamming it shut behind them as the ghost slipped through it.

"Power cells. Where?" Kellamy said, turning the door's inside lock as it shook from the Knights' blasts.

"Third to the right," the ghost answered. She looked slightly worried, Sparx noticed. "Do _try _to escape," she said. "It's necessary for your Destiny…"

"We. Are." Kellamy was fiddling with the lock on the third door, and stepped back. "Blast the lock," he said.

Sparx quickly shot it open, and they rushed through.

There were a few power cells hanging from the walls, wires stretching from them to supply the area with electricity, and Kellamy quickly made his way over to them.

"Teleport?" Sparx said.

She looked up the hallway, and realised that the Knights had broken through the door.

He nodded, quickly absorbing what energy he could.

"_I_ will meet you at your hideout," the ghost said, and disappeared into another wall. Sparx couldn't bring herself to care.

She ducked as a blast from one of the Knights slammed over her head, and felt the pressure of Kellamy's arm around her shoulder as they were transported away from the Knights' territory.

- -

Chaos looked up as they appeared, hope in her eyes dying as suddenly as it flared.

"Who was it?" she said quietly.

"Livingstone."

Chaos stood slowly, her fist clenched and face unmoving; whatever emotion she felt she clearly wasn't going to show.

"I should not have had you walk into a trap," she said. She turned to glare at Sparx. "I do not know what it is, Knight, but since you have come here we have lost many."

"I didn't betray you, if that's what you mean," Sparx said fiercely. "I'm sorry your friends died, I _know_ what that feels like…"

The Avraam she'd known had been on prison duty the night the evils had all escaped. Oh, they'd let most people live—a PR victory as much as anything else, it hadn't been a massacre—though that hadn't changed the pain she'd felt, or brought the dead back.

"We all have our own mourning," Kellamy said softly.

"We lack the time for it," Chaos said, fiercely. "We had a cause, once, and we'll need our lives for that. Not to sacrifice for a _Knight_ from another dimension."

_Even Random at his most evil moments hadn't been quite as…formidable…as this_, Sparx decided.

She raised a hand to the Knight insignia on her sleeve. She'd been proud of it, once, graduating from the Academy with the highest score in the class despite certain disciplinary complaints, proud to be on Ace's team after he'd mentored her through part of her training, proud to fight evil, to _do right and fear not and fight the_—_the undead _thing_, he wasn't a person any more_—_who'd been the reason for that motto in the first place_…

And then she'd come here, and seen other Knights torture and kill, in the name of righteousness and Destiny. Knights who might have been her friends, in another dimension.

Sparx ripped the insignia from both her sleeves and let it fall to the ground.

"In your dimension, I'm _not_," she said.

"She was the first thing you saw when you woke after the pain, wasn't she, Kellamy?" Chaos said. "Imprinting, and it wouldn't be the first time you've been fooled by a pretty face…"

Kellamy walked over to her, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Blame Livingstone. Blame Louisa. Blame the Knights' system…" He paused. "You were right. We lack the time to mourn. Where do we go?"

"We have little choice but to head for your people," Chaos said to him.

Sparx recognised that tone of voice. It was how Random had sounded when he had started talking about the need to install new generators right after he'd heard the news about his father.

"They value power, though the number of those born to it is decreasing. Under what circumstances did you leave?" Chaos continued.

"Illegal duelling. They will not necessarily welcome me back, but better anything than the Knights."

"We should have tonight before the Knight tech specialists will find this place. I can plot a routine. We have enough power cells left to get us there, and a means of transport. You have fought today; rest while you can, but watch the Knight." Chaos gave Sparx another penetrating glare. "I _will_ know if you communicate with anyone, or leave this area."

Sparx held up her Knight-order phone. "You _really _need this much proof I'm…what I am? I'm fighting for what I think is right. Not anything else. But if it makes you feel any better, then take this, because even if you've lost friends you don't need to treat me like this!"

She stopped herself in her outburst as soon as she could, but the damage had probably already been done.

"I won't need it, Knight, though I knew something like that was in your possession." Chaos made no move to take it from her.

It was then that the ghost made her decision to reappear.

_Probably waiting for the most dramatic moment_, Sparx thought grumpily, tucking her phone back on her belt.

"Chaos Virus. You are appropriately named," Vincenza said.

_Virus?_ Sparx though, surprised, and then felt stupid. _Oh. Of course. She's Random's…alternate thingy._

Chaos stared. "Who are you?"

"They called me the voice of Destiny," the ghost replied. "I spent ten years dealing prophecy for the Lightning Knights, before they created a catalyst in history by summoning _her_." She nodded to Sparx.

"Vincenza du Lac," Kellamy muttered.

Chaos looked surprised, and Sparx didn't blame her.

It had been a nobleman called Hugo du Lac who had founded the Knights on her world, though the family had faded into obscurity a long time ago. She supposed it had been the same in this world.

"A du Lac, who has by her own admission offered information to our enemies," Chaos sad. "Bad company."

"It was a good idea, once," Kellamy said. "_You_ might have thought so. Lady du Lac did help us out of there."

"I don't trust anyone connected to the Knights." Chaos turned the full force of her stare onto the ghost, who calmly met it.

"You did, once, _sir_ Virus." Vincenza shrugged elegantly. "I have no love for the Knights, my _dear_ brother especially included. Sanctimonious superhero. Our darling Louisa reminds me of him, though an actual connection is unlikely."

Sparx stared in spite of herself. _Hugo du Lac's _sister? She'd known the era, three hundred and whatever years ago, but hadn't thought the ghost would be so closely related…

"I…I don't think he ever had a sister, on my world…" she said, breaking into the conversation.

Vincenza turned on her.

"Of course he did not," she said. "And perhaps should never have." She turned back to Chaos. "I have the power to guide you," she said. "I have already assisted your compatriots to escape. Follow my instructions, renegades. Or you shall be doomed. I should know."

"Destiny's voice," Chaos said calmly. "I think you should know what will happen regardless. I'll give my own orders. We can't harm a dead woman. But we _can _refuse to listen."

"I know that your world is doomed," Vincenza said, "and you are needed to save it."

- -

Kellamy sat on the rather dirty-looking pallet with his back to the wall, trying to ignore the ghost's voice that still floated through the room. Chaos was doing her best to ignore her, but the spectral entity calling herself Destiny's voice didn't seem to want to _shut up_.

He had dark circles under his eyes, and Sparx sat beside him, putting a hand on his arm.

"She was…one of the bravest people I ever knew, and the strongest," he said. "Never would back down from a fight, or give up. And that was what I did to her, in the end…"

"She was dead," Sparx said firmly. "You had to…"

"I _know_," he replied. "Death is something we've had to become accustomed to."

There didn't seem to be much she could say to respond to that, and they remained silent for a few minutes.

"Tell me, Knight," he said, leaning back. "What was she like in your world?"

"Powerful," Sparx said. "Not on our side. The…situation's all different, I don't know what made him what he was…"

_And I wouldn't have cared if he died. Does that make me any different to Louisa and the others?_

- -

"Bloody teleporter."

"Language, Tim," Louisa said calmly. She'd finally lost the dagger in her shoulder, though a slight bloodstain showed through her jacket. They were both walking down a main street of town, the passers-by stopping to make way for them.

Something small and blue came whizzing towards them, and Louisa automatically reached a hand out to grab it.

A small child in a uniform came running along the pavement, and Tim reached down to stop her.

"Hey, hold it, kid," he said.

Louisa gave the child a reassuring smile. "This yours?" She held out the ball. "Be more careful next time. You'll hurt yourself."

"Thanks, miss!" The girl held out her hand for the ball, but Louisa hesitated.

"Don't run on the streets," she said. "You think you can remember that?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

The girl took her ball and quickly walked off to join an orderly line of other uniformed children, waiting for the City Rail.

"What we're fighting for, really," Louisa said, looking at the line, which had straightened up at the sight of the two Knights.

The streets were neat and clean, almost blindingly so in the rising sun's rays, most passers-by proceeding at a sedate pace.

"Kids? Well, yeah, I guess so." Tim shrugged. "Messy little brats." He wiped something sticky off the hand he'd used to stop the girl. "Toffee, I'd bet."

"They're still able to be disciplined, at that age," Louisa said. She paused. "Have you noticed the streets are even cleaner these days?"

"Hardly any Chaos-scum left."

"Precisely, my friend. We learn to follow the rules, we mature, we grow up…it's how it's supposed to be."

"I've always left the rules to you. You know how it is."

Louisa turned to face him. "I thought that was the most important thing about our duty. Following orders."

"I _do_. Mostly," Tim added. "I trust your judgement, and you're in charge here anyway."

"Well. That's something," Louisa said. "You're a talented Knight, Tim. Just don't let anything distract you from orders."

"Yeah, whatever," he said easily, and offered her a mock-salute. "S'long as you let me fight."

- -

She'd managed to fall asleep after all, Sparx realised, raising a hand to her head. So had Kellamy; he was breathing evenly, eyes closed and hair starting to weave its way out of the plait. She tried not to disturb him as she stood up awkwardly. She didn't remember the exact moment when the stresses of the past few days had crept up on her and she'd blacked out, but evidently she hadn't bothered to disentangle herself from him first.

Sparx reached under her turtleneck, and felt that the cut had started to heal, a thick scab forming. It probably wouldn't even scar, not that that really mattered.

She walked into the basement area to find Chaos bent over an open fusebox, wires spilling everywhere. She'd evidently found the time to shape herself a makeshift prosthesis, using two metal arms to disconnect and reconnect the wires in a pattern Sparx couldn't quite make sense of.

"Covering our tracks and gaining what power supplies we can," Chaos said, still absorbed in the wiring. "One or two power cells left in the cupboard, Kellamy."

"I'm Sparx," she said.

The cyborg froze. "Then go wake him up. We leave as soon as possible. Maybe even shake off the damn ghost while we're at it."

"A wise idea. The leaving, I mean, naturally."

Sparx couldn't resist a slight grimace as the voice of Destiny appeared again.

"They sent Knights to sweep the town," Vincenza said.

"Thought as much." Chaos kept her back turned.

"They changed route sixteen."

Chaos turned her head. "What?" She walked over to the wallscreen and activated it, causing a glowing network of lines to appear.

"You're _right_." She sounded surprised.

"I _am _the voice of Destiny." The ghost sounded far too complacent.

Chaos scowled, and looked at Sparx. "Plan's changed. Get Kellamy, _now_."

- -

"Wha?" He opened his eyes, light pouring onto his face from the small crack in the wall. "Why didn't you get me earlier?" He half-fell from the pallet to stand up, raising an impatient hand to brush hair from his face.

Sparx heard a loud creaking noise, stone grating against stone.

"We haven't got time to waste," Chaos called.

There was a trapdoor set in the floor, and Sparx was surprised she hadn't noticed it yet.

"They put route sixteen twenty minutes early," Chaos said. "Don't know if they had us in mind or not, but this is our last chance here." She quickly walked down a set of stairs, not bothering to look back at the other three.

Sparx still wasn't sure precisely what route sixteen was, but Kellamy seemed to know, so she followed him down into the dark area.

At the bottom of the stairs was a small, enclosed carriage, sitting on silvery rails that gleamed slightly in the darkness.

"Underground rail system?" Sparx said, noticing how her voice echoed in the blackness surrounding her.

"Fairly widely used, but there are a couple of tracks and passages the Knights don't know about. Like this one," Kellamy explained, stepping into the carriage behind Chaos.

"Cutting it fine. Let's go." Chaos lifted a hand, and the door slammed just as Sparx got in, nearly cutting her in two.

The carriage set off down the rails, shuddering and giving off slight electrical sparks as it passed, and Sparx managed to fling herself onto the seat before it _really _started accelerating.

Not that she wasn't used to speed, in the Flash, but an enclosed carriage was something different, especially if the person controlling it with her immense power over electricity definitely wasn't in the most stable of moods.

**A/N:** Thanks to **LightningFlash**, **Scarab Dynasty**, and **AnnihilateLadyIllusion** for your kind reviews.

The title of this fic doesn't directly relate to the episode 'Choices', though it is a slight tongue-in-cheek reference to **LightningFlash**'s _Destiny's Children_ (this fic isn't related to that either, but I'd recommend reading _Children_ if you haven't already).


	6. Death From Hope Station

**CHAPTER SIX: DEATH FROM HOPE STATION**

"Three down, and no sign," Tim said. "Like they'll take this route anyway, 'specially not anywhere as busy as Hope. Cyborg and elf'd stand out too much."

"It's necessary." Louisa turned back from the station office after giving the warning to the officials. "We might even get lucky. There aren't that many ways to leave this city."

A carriage filled with schoolchildren—Tim thought it might have been the same school as the kid they'd seen earlier, the uniforms looked similar—opened its door to allow the station guard, a greying middle-aged man with the official lightning insignia on his cap, to get in for a brief inspection. After a few minutes the guard stepped back and closed the door again, giving a quick nod to the Knights.

"Yeah, yeah," Tim muttered. "The thing with Chaos and them is, they get _imaginative_."

"True. It's one of the reasons why they're so dangerous."

"You knew her better than me. What do you think they'll try?"

Louisa looked thoughtful for an instant. "My friend, taking an aerial route would be a somewhat more difficult business. She wouldn't be able to destroy _all_ the spy satellites on the cardinal points, and I doubt she'd have access to vehicles without some tracking bug finding her."

"Leaving…this, I guess. Or waiting around like a rat in a trap." Tim grinned briefly. "Maybe HQ were right after all. Or maybe there's something we don't know about."

"We'll catch them, Tim. Headquarters have their plan."

A slim veiled woman—a Southern immigrant probably, Tim thought, you didn't get so many of them around Londres—crossed the platform, and Louisa walked over to her leisurely to stop her with a hand on her shoulder.

_The woman's not moving like the damned elf_, Tim decided, _not quite as…well, flowing'd be what you'd call it, and too small for the 'borg_, but he kept his hand on his sword, just in case, as the veiled woman dug into her bag for an identity card. _'Course, with that _hair_ you'd think he might be a girl._

There was a brief conversation between them as Louisa examined the card, which Tim didn't bother to try to listen in on, and then Louisa took a step back, flashing a brief smile at the woman as she returned to her partner.

"Still no sign." Tim scanned the crowd, almost idly, for possible terrorists.

"What have we discussed about patience?" Louisa said, rather indulgently.

Tim rolled his eyes. "I'd just hate to think that our powers are wasted here, that's all."

* * *

"_Can_ you travel like this, considering your ectoplasmic situation?" Kellamy said to the ghost. 

"I am _quite _capable of controlling my relative spatial location," she replied haughtily, settled next to Chaos.

"Pity," Chaos muttered darkly.

"What was it like being dead?" Kellamy asked.

"Peaceful." Vincenza looked wistful for a second. "I would rather be resting in my grave than forced on this rude summons by a higher power. You have no idea of the terrible tribulations I suffer as a ghost, incorporeal, barely able to sense the world around me…"

"Yeah, life sucks," Sparx interrupted her. "Well, undeath in your case, I guess."

Vincenza glared. "Impertinent young chit."

"So, how old are _you_?" Sparx said. She really didn't look much older than Sparx herself, from what you could tell from a greenish semitransparent woman.

"Well past my third century," she replied frostily.

"Yeah, but you spent however many years_ dead_. How old were you when you died?"

"And I spent ten years dealing prophecy to the Knights to convince them of my veracity to set certain plans in motion."

Sparx saw Chaos and Kellamy exchange a quick glance, but decided to keep on her thread of questioning.

"You didn't answer the question. How old?"

The ghost looked as though she would have blushed had she possessed flesh. "Twenty."

"Year older. Don't call me little, _Lady_." Sparx smirked at her.

"I was _referring_ to your apparent maturity level."

"Why'd you have me brought here if I'm that immature?"

"The Knights would only have accepted a fellow Knight, and you were the third choice there in terms of power. Think about your friends."

_Random has…mental issues, and Ace…Ace loves Lady Illusion. Oh._

"And, um, you wanted one of us…why?"

"Power is rare on this world, and you were a catalyst." Vincenza waved an arm through the air vaguely, the tips of her long fingers passing through the carriage door.

"Can you hear that?" Kellamy said, and both Sparx and Vincenza fell silent to listen.

There was a slight_ clinking_ noise that Sparx was sure hadn't been there before, coming from some distance behind them.

"Route sixteen," Chaos said. "They're just behind us, and catching up."

"Can we outrun them?"

Chaos stood up, and slammed a metal fist into the back of the carriage, ripping a hole and letting a cold blast of air through.

Behind the hole, they could see another, larger carriage launching towards them, a behemoth of gleamingly clean iron and steel, two bright headlights lancing through the darkness. The distance between them and it was closing rapidly.

"No," Chaos said, and unclipped an explosive from her belt. "I can't stop them, either. But this should keep them busy."

She pulled the pin from it, and threw it onto the tracks in front of them. For a second it just lay there, an innocent-looking grey cylinder; but as both carriages hurtled on, it exploded, and a cloud of smoke rose up between them.

Sparx could not see for a second after the bright explosion, and started coughing as the burning smoke blew into her nostrils. They were moving away from it, but the pungent stench was strong enough to keep her sinuses watering.

"They're still coming," she heard Kellamy say.

"They won't get far on a destroyed track. This is the strongest I've got."

Sparx heard another explosion, and tried not to breathe as more smoke entered the carriage. Vincenza was flickering oddly as the smoke wafted through her, twisting and rippling her form.

There was a _bang_, a sort of loud clinking sound, and she thought she heard screams coming from the other carriage.

"I don't believe it. They jumped the track." Kellamy sounded nervous now.

Chaos cursed dispassionately. "They'll run us down. Knight! Can you blast them?"

Sparx stood up, materialising her sword. There were tears in her eyes that made the world seem a darkened blur through the smoke, and she focused to aim through the hole in the carriage.

The other carriage hurtled towards them, seeming almost out-of-control, and accelerating.

Sparx concentrated on raising as much energy as she could, screwing up her eyes to see properly through the tears, and fired.

She could hear herself yelling a battle cry as the blast hit the metal monster in front of them. Bright pink sparked off her target as it began to disintegrate, and she thought she heard screaming that wasn't her own.

The other carriage suddenly disappeared from view as the tracks she could see in front of her seemed much higher. Sparx stopped firing as she was flung into the other wall as the route took a sharp turn southwards.

It felt like the gravity-defying rollercoaster she'd once fought Lady Illusion on, with railway tracks running up a mountain that was flashing past a gaping hole, but this wasn't even a twisted playground ride.

"Thanks, Knight," Chaos said calmly. She and Kellamy had clung onto the wall to stop themselves falling, Sparx noticed, as she tried to get back on her feet, wiping her eyes.

"How far does this _drop_?"

Surely underground railway systems weren't supposed to be this steep. Or this unsteady. It felt like they were travelling horizontally, with no assurance that gravity would not have its way, and she wished again to be travelling in her Lightning Flash.

"It flattens out shortly," Chaos said. "This is where we disappear from public domain."

"Yeah, thanks for the warning." Sparx struggled to a standing position, and shivered in spite of herself as a cold wind from the torn wall hit her.

"Thanks for the save." Kellamy drew his cloak around himself.

"Hey, it's what we do…" Sparx stopped, remembering about the Knights here. "What _I _do. Wrong dimension."

Vincenza, parts of her shape fluttering through the wall as she attempted to keep herself inside the carriage, laughed. "Very nice work, etcetera, but you are exceptionally naïve."

"It's naïve to want to save people?" Sparx glared at her. The ghost had said she'd summoned her to…to help save the world or something, but her attitude didn't bear that out. "Then I don't care. I'll just _be_ naïve."

"What if you fail?" Vincenza was pretending to examine her nails now, long fingers still rippling slightly in the air.

"That's not why you wanted me. Or what do you _really_ want?"

"Eternal rest." Vincenza said firmly. "But I've never liked Knights. Of any sort."

Chaos held up a hand, then quickly replaced it to keep herself standing in the speeding carriage. "That's enough. From both of you." She turned her attention to the ghost. "You said you wished to help us. And you were correct about the route. That gives us no obligation to place complete trust in you. Or to listen to you blabber, or to like you."

"And Destiny forced on me no obligation to enjoy your company." Vincenza's tone sounded bored. "Chaos, terrorist, traitor, deserter, invert, molester…"

"I deny nothing," Chaos said stonily.

"Oh, but I'm _exaggerating_, aren't I?" Vincenza said. "You didn't _mean _to. And I'm sure it felt right at the time."

"And how did you die?" Chaos asked. "Suffocated for sheer tire of listening to your voice?"

Vincenza gave an elegant shrug. "Poison. A dastardly intrigue that went the wrong way. I've never been one to claim noble motivations. You've heard of my sainted brother."

"Do you do everything possible, bar harming us, to establish yourself as untrustworthy in order to make us believe in your ultimate veracity, or are you truly both unpleasant and truthful?" Kellamy said.

"I saved you once. Believe me, it is in _all _our interests that you trust me. It is Destiny." Vincenza actually bothered to look into his eyes as she spoke.

"Then what's Destiny's plan?" Sparx began.

The carriage ground to a halt, stopped on a low plateau. They had to be a long way below the surface, Sparx thought.

"There should be old lift machinery ahead of us," Chaos said. "I can feel it."

"How far are we, and where are we located?" Kellamy asked, landing on the ground in a neat spring.

"At the border of the Black Forest, conveniently far away from the mining concerns, but we'll have to go a bit roundabout to avoid the Light Elves. Think you can survive a hike?"

"At the _border_? That'll take at least a day!" Sparx said. She'd never tried to head to the Darkholt before, because she wasn't stupid and hadn't needed to anyway, but she knew the Black Forest was a fairly large place. In her own world, anyway.

"A few hours. We should be there by evening, if you can keep up, Knight," Chaos said.

Sparx clenched her fists, trying not to lose her temper completely. "I can keep up. It's just smaller than where I come from, is all."

Her attempt at a dramatic exit ahead of Chaos was somewhat spoiled by her nearly tripping over the board placed at the tracks' ending as the carriage's lights suddenly shut off, leaving them in darkness.

"Human mining has destroyed a lot of the Forest," she heard Kellamy's voice say as he offered her a hand. "It is more of a Light Elf concern, but some of us do resent the inroads to our territory, or did when I was last there."

"Which is…"

"Nearly five years," he said. "Long enough for old grudges to wear off..."

There was a grinding noise of metal on metal, and Sparx slammed both her hands over her ears.

A beam of red light shot into the darkness in front of them, coming from Chaos' right eye. Ahead of them was a rusty-looking structure, an old elevator creaking its way downwards, and Sparx stared up through the gloom at the long way to the top.

-

**A/N:** Thanks to all reviewers, especially **LightningFlash**, who very kindly has reviewed every chapter. Some unpublished Uberverse material (cowritten with **LightningFlash**) will be used in upcoming chapters, however I'll attempt to use only my own inventions and not duplicate existing plots.


	7. Conversion of Conversation

**CHAPTER SEVEN: CONVERSION OF CONVERSATION**

Louisa had recommended against it, but he'd been bored and had decided himself in need of something salty and unhealthy (he required electricity, not food, but Knight Command was generally in favour of Knights assimilating into the human population as much as possible), which was why Timothy Kyrun was presently occupied in viciously kicking the vending machine that stood in the corner of the station. A new set of efficiency guidelines for machinery had been introduced five years ago with some controversy—he remembered having to accompany inspectors to factories while he was still a cadet—but for some reason in this case the official standards weren't helping him get any closer to the food.

He slammed the machine with the side of his hand, and the packet of chips finally shook itself loose and fell.

Flexing his bruised hand, he bent down to retrieve it, but the yell from behind him interrupted.

"Tim! Emergency in tunnel forty-four B!" Louisa called. He noticed her slamming her comm back on her belt as she ran through the crowd and lifted off to fly through the tunnel system.

It took him only a second to dial the code on his wrist beeper that summoned his flyer, a few seconds more to wait for it to appear through the skylight, and he was off, racing after her in frantic pursuit of whatever was happening.

* * *

_This wasn't what a…a legendary magic forest was supposed to look like_, Sparx thought, lifting a branch wearily. _Or feel like. Only a few hours, ha!_

_Hiking's definitely not my thing_, she decided, reaching up to wipe her sweat-coated fringe back from her forehead. Vincenza, of course, was nonchalantly floating a few inches above the ground, a smirk set into her transparent features, though Sparx decided she'd better save her energy for hacking through the trees rather than glaring at the ghost. It felt like _years_ since she'd had a decent powerup, though sleep would help fix things.

There was some consolation to be found by the fact that Chaos and Kellamy didn't seem to be handling it that well, either; Chaos kept muttering dourly about rust, and Kellamy had had to stop several times to untangle his braid from various branches on which it had caught, the length of muttered syllables emitting from him increasing each time.

"Do you have a location coordinate and a map?" Kellamy asked, turning to Chaos.

She dialled something on her wrist, and a three-dimensional map of the area popped up. "We're here," she said, pointing to a point in the middle of a valley, "and the mining concern is over there. A bit too close to us for comfort if we keep on this path."

"But we must also avoid encroaching on Light Elf territory," Kellamy said. "I doubt that will be on your map. I'll continue navigating."

"They would choose the Knights as a lesser threat?" Chaos pointed to the sky, where, incongruously in this forest, Sparx could see a tall plume of smoke rising. "Against you?"

Kellamy grinned, leaning casually against a tree as he spoke. "You cast scorn on my abilities as a foe."

"Yeah, but the Light Elves are _nice_," Sparx said. She followed Kellamy's lead by slouching against a large tree opposite his. It was _way _past time for a break. "We're just passing through, right? We don't mean them any harm."

Chaos laughed, though she sounded more like Random in a bad mood than anyone who was genuinely enjoying themselves—which, Sparx supposed, was fair enough under the circumstances. "_Nice _is a word that can mean a number of things. Principal among them, inactivity. You never made a study of politics and races on your world, did you, Knight?"

"I know enough," Sparx said.

"They would not take kindly to one of my complexion. Or a band of…warriors…such as ourselves," Kellamy said. "You may be human—after a fashion—but I'm surprised you don't know that. Or is it not so on your world?"

"Yeah, they don't fight because they hate hurting people and they really like nature, and they've never forgotten the big war with the Dark Elves. But they're always the good guys, right?" She paused, realising what she'd just said to the elf standing in front of her. "Oh, _short_. I really put my foot in it this time, didn't I?"

"Good? Or is _correct_ your intended meaning? I'm sure," Kellamy said coldly. "Somewhat _passive_, certainly. Inclined to rigidly follow certain codes of behaviour. A disinclination to openly admit one's true powers. Despisal of cunning and the more subtle arts. But the Lady Discord's action in seizing the silver apple was entirely justified…"

Vincenza sighed loudly. "She decided to claim title over Silvertree's reasonably legitimate right to an ancient throne and started off a war between the two races that lasted a thousand years and allowed humans to rise to dominance. I knew that one. Are we going to rehash ancient legends or move beyond the area between Knight mining and Light Elf territory?"

Sparx glared at her. "It might be easy for _you _to just float on and on without stopping, but some of us actually have _bodies_, and I don't think any of us do nature walks for fun. And I didn't know the story, and it might help because we're actually going to the Darkholt..."

"And your ignorance is worth the waste of time?" Vincenza laughed. "Then again, living flesh is weak. How you made it through here in the first place Destiny has not informed me," she added, nodding at Kellamy.

"A few judicious teleports once I had passed the protected zones, and a little sorcerous transport," he said. He cocked an eyebrow at Vincenza. "Why the hurry, Lady? Bored? Or aware of something more than us?"

"The latter is obvious," Vincenza said sharply, "and I would not recommend lurking here for longer than necessary."

"I should not admit it," Chaos said, "but the ghost has a point, and we've passed halfway. Let's move." She strode on, and after a slight pause Sparx followed her.

"Sorry I said that to you, I didn't mean that _you_ were evil or anything like that…" she began to Kellamy.

"Being humanity's bogeymen is something we tend to take pride in," he replied coldly, and walked on.

Sparx sighed, and concentrated on ignoring the blisters that were starting to form inside her boots.

* * *

He saw the shattered hulk lying sideways on the wails, and heard an echo of screaming. 

"Lou, what's going on?"

"Help me get it open." She laid a thin blue beam of lightning along each side of the door. Tim activated the light on his flyer, and jumped down to help her get the door off.

"It's _them_, isn't it." The realisation struck Tim as he pried off the door and with some effort put it to one side. "Chaos escaped. We missed her."

"We can't go after her just yet," Louisa said, carefully opening the sides of the carriage, and it was then that Tim realised exactly what had happened.

It was one of the carriages they'd seen leave, some part of his brain supplied, the one with the schoolkids, but the shattered mass of bodies still trapped in the carriage bore less resemblance to schoolchildren than sacks of bloody and burned flesh.

"Med-cart should be arriving soon," Louisa said from behind him.

"Save them," Tim said.

A girl tottered to her feet. There was blood down the side of her face, and Tim noticed electricity burns on her arms, but at least she was alive. "Get us out of here, Margaret isn't waking up and we're all hurt, something blew up. There were sparks flying everywhere and we…"

"We're here to help," he said, and carefully helped her out of the metal hell. Rage surged within him towards those who had done this to her.

Louisa lifted another girl, who hung limply in her arms, her arm twisted in some impossible way.

"Shouldn't we not move the seriously injured?" Tim said quietly, walking back to her.

"She's not injured. She's dead," Louisa replied, also in an undertone. "Help those you can."

Dying schoolgirls did not grant him an external foe to fight. He wanted to scream some battle cry, rush into action; but there were people who needed him now, and however useless he felt, he had to do something.

With a jolt he recognised the girl with the ball who'd run past them only this morning; she was burned and shaken, something about the look in her eyes _wrong_, but she actually managed a weak smile at him as he tried to help her out.

Sirens finally started to come from a distance, the med-carts finally arriving, professionals who could deal with this, leave the battles to the Knights and the cleanup to the others.

"It's okay, Tim. We've done what we could." Louisa put a hand on his shoulder. "At least this helps our cause against Chaos."

_Helps the_ cause?

He jerked his shoulder free.

"Louisa. You didn't…."

"Didn't what?" She turned sharply.

"You said that this would help our cause."

"It will. This atrocity should help us smoke the last of Chaos' backers out."

"This is _wrong_, Louisa. That girl we saw this morning…"

"Of course it's wrong. They're evil enough to do something like this. We never owed them mercy."

Avraam walked over to them after signing the witness form to let the medical technicians in to do their jobs. "Route sixteen is generally a cargo route. Ball-bearings, I believe. ElectroTech Incorporated's weekly transport load. Why did they change this schedule and make various other changes, Louisa?"

"There were probably some conflicts, and Knight Headquarters rearranged the times," Louisa said. "The customary procedure for such clashes."

"That's not what we want to know," Tim burst out. "I want to know, _did you know that this would happen_? They changed the route for today, and you said this would be good for us and bad for Chaos, and this is wrong, and…"

"No." Her voice was soft, but it seemed to spread through to the corners of the room, and she didn't hesitate to answer. "I swear I didn't know."

"No orders? Nothing from the bigwigs at Headquarters to let something like this happen, so that we can _smoke Chaos out for good_ or something like that?"

"Tim." She put a hand on his shoulder. "You're getting hysterical over this. I told you, it is none of us who are to blame for this atrocity."

He sighed, and shook off her hand. "I know. I know it was Chaos' fault," he said. "Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop these…things."

"We did," Louisa said. "We tried. Get back on the flyer, Tim. We'll go after them and send them into white hot oblivion."

"Headquarters could not have known for certain they would choose this way, Tim," Avraam said softly as he summoned his own flyer. "They could not patrol every exit into the underground."

"We know where Chaos is now," Tim said, the calculations gradually beginning to run through his mind. _She killed children. We found them. We know where they were, oh, say, half an hour ago._ "Bet they're heading for the Darkholt. Which means they took that tunnel." He pointed to the one down which Louisa had already disappeared. "And you can tell where they went. The track's scratched. Must have been a fast trip."

"You have a good sense of direction, Tim," Avraam said, guiding his flyer next to him. "We leave the officially mapped areas at the end of this one, correct?"

"I'm not sure. I don't do maps. Let's just hunt them down." He added pressure to the speed dial, and disappeared down the tunnel ahead of the other Knight.

* * *

Sparx looked up to see the plume of smoke still blotting the horizon, though its size was very much reduced. They'd evidently managed to find a good middle path between settlements; they hadn't seen any people so far, which, of course, was the goal. 

Ahead of her she could make out a large black mountain, incongruously planted dead centre in flat forestland; the legend went that it had been created by sorcery, which was probably true, Sparx thought, looking at it. In contrast to the forested area surrounding it, its sides were completely bare, and as smooth as glass.

Humans called it the Darkholt, domain of the elves.

Kellamy stopped suddenly.

"What?" she asked.

"Beyond this spot and they will know we are here," Kellamy said. "Chaos, after you?"

"Power signatures?" Chaos asked. Kellamy nodded. "Fine."

She took a few steps forward, and nothing happened.

"Why the big deal?" Sparx asked, once again falling into step behind Kellamy. "I didn't see anything special happening."

"The protective wards have been triggered," Vincenza said. "I know you can't sense them, but would elementary intelligence be too much to ask of you? They will lock onto Chaos first, as the most powerful of us. And I do not think your elven friend is going to be entirely welcome on his return; I'm sure he'll tell you his side of the story."

"Yeah, something about illegal duelling, right?" Sparx said. She looked at Kellamy. "Who were you fighting?"

"I responded harshly to an insult of a friend," Kellamy said. ""My opponent was from a wealthier Family than I, and they attempted to apply the strongest penalties possible. It did not help that I would have won, either."

Vincenza rolled her eyes at the last statement, though did not comment.

"Oh. What'll they do to you for coming back?" Sparx asked.

"Nothing, if I can influence it," Chaos said. "And I think they will approve of our cause."

"You _think_. Not a very positive reassurance, is it?" Vincenza said. Before anyone responded, though, she sighed, gazing up at the dark mountain. "I would have died to come here when I was alive."

"I guess you did," Sparx snapped. "Happy now?"

"I am too limited in this form to achieve anything of worth, open a book or activate a spell," Vincenza replied, with another sigh and a slight pause. "But I'd much rather here than Londres. This is the home of sorcery, and perhaps the end of my quest." She half-smiled, and looked almost pretty for a second—probably because she wasn't trying to insult anyone for once, Sparx thought.

* * *

"Clever," Louisa muttered, running a hand over the underside of the metal platform that had somehow been fused to the shaft. 

"Blast it open?" Tim said.

"I don't want to let the entire shaft collapse on us." Louisa studied the join intently.

"Should I call Headquarters, Louisa?" Avraam asked. "They are on foot. Catching up to them will be easy once we get out of here."

"I think I've got it. Stand under the supports, over there." She pointed. "If anything goes wrong, make it to the surface and finish the mission. Nobody else should be using these tunnels, by order."

"If you are not sure, we should get help," Avraam said firmly.

"Lou knows what she's doing. Let's get on with it." Tim directed his flyer to where Louisa had indicated. "Faster we get after them, the better."

"Official policy is nobody knows about these routes if we can avoid it," Louisa said. "And Tim's right. We're the ones who can best deal with Chaos. Get back there and wait." Blue fire started to gather around her wrists, and Avraam moved to stand next to Tim.

She blasted along one side first, then a corner; Tim watched white-hot metal drip down through the shaft. Then a join, and she carefully removed one of the supports; Tim reached a hand to his ear as the rusted metal creaked.

"Centre of gravity. Friction requirements," Louisa muttered. She reached a hand to the corner, and carefully withdrew a small key.

"One more." She quickly sent a blast along the top, and retreated back to the other Knights.

Another screech from the old elevator—it reminded Tim of a scream of terror, though he didn't want to think about the aftermath of Chaos' flight—and Louisa aimed a final blast into the very centre of the platform.

Another grating scream, and the elevator fell with a clatter, landing at the bottom of the shaft in two neatly sawed pieces.

The sound was disconcertingly loud in the quiet tunnel, but Louisa's shoulders relaxed as nothing else happened. Greyish light poured in from the surface, quite a distance above them.

Then the shaft's support beams started shaking.

Avraam glanced up at the roof uncomfortably. "I think we should get out of here."

"I'm there." Tim activated the flyer, and looped around a falling beam to make it to the top, closely followed by Louisa.

One of the support beams hit the top of the tunnel, making a crack appear through it. A shower of earth fell through it, lashing the ground like rainfall. Avraam stepped out of the way and started his own race to the top.

More earth spilled, and the other three beams started to collapse; one of them hit Tim's flyer, and he scrabbled to grab onto the shaft's edge, trying to struggle up onto the ground without the benefit of the vehicle. Avraam hesitated in his rush towards the surface, making sure to avoid the collapsing beams and showers of earth.

Louisa, standing on the edge, used her powers to vaporize a beam that was close to hitting Avraam.

The ground Tim was holding on to began to fall away, and he scrabbled to gain some hold.

"Lou!"

"I'm there," she said, but for a horrible second it seemed like she wasn't moving at all and Tim was going to end up crushed under the debris—_Tim Kyrun, known as TNT, Lightning Knight, always said he wanted to be cremated_—and then she was flying towards him, and on his left out of the corner of his eye Avraam was rising out of the pit.

The ground gave way under his fingers, but by then Louisa had grabbed his hand and dragged him to safety.

"Thanks," he said, brushing earth off his knees.

She shrugged. "The fault was mine." She stared into the void for a second. "Well. At least we know we won't get any more rebels escaping that way."

Avraam raised an eyebrow. "Another silver lining?"

"It doesn't matter." She lifted off. "Take Tim with you. We're not going to waste any more time."

_It was going to be an uncomfortable trip_, Tim thought—the standard-issue flyers weren't exactly built to hold more than one person—but he climbed on behind Avraam, and held on as well he could.

* * *

Nothing had _happened_, though it had been at _least_ fifteen minutes since they'd entered the area. Whatever the protective wards were supposed to actually do, they didn't seem to be working. And the mountain didn't seem to be getting any closer, Sparx reflected dourly. 

"So are there…" She stopped speaking as Chaos held up a hand, and three green-skinned figures shimmered into existence in front of them.

"Okay. Guess the ward-things worked," she said cheerfully. _All right, Dark Elves aren't supposed to be nice or anything, but hey, everything's different in this world…_ "Hi." She raised a hand in greeting.

Two of them were female and one male; the woman in the middle carried no visible weapon over her elaborate outfit, though the other two both carried sheathed swords in jewelled scabbards, and the man on the left also had a curved dagger thrust into his belt.

"Um. You speak Standard?" Sparx said, into the silence. None of them replied.

Chaos flung her a glare. "I'll handle this," she muttered. She said something rather slowly in a language that sounded only vaguely familiar to Sparx.

Though her companion on the right laughed at Chaos' attempts, the woman in the middle, who seemed to have a lot to say and a tendency to say it very quickly, replied.

_Wish Ace was here_, Sparx thought moodily, unable to understand a single word of what the woman was saying. He spoke a bit of dark elvish, she knew; she'd seen him exchange a few words in the language with Lady Illusion, though afterwards he had refused to tell her the exact content of the dialogue. Random might have been the official brains of their team, but when it came to the practical stuff Ace was even better than him. Which made Sparx the dumb one, sometimes, but at least she knew how to fight…

She was tugged from her brief reminiscences when the elf raised a hand, and glowing green walls sprang into existence around them, trapping them with the other three.

Sparx automatically raised her hands to summon her sword, but stopped. The elf was still talking and Chaos listening with a studious expression, so whatever was happening couldn't be _that_ bad.

"What'd she do?" she whispered to Kellamy, who was staring intently at the woman. "And what's she saying?"

"Raised mage-shielding, expects us to prove power, now getting onto the subject of politics…" he said out of the corner of his mouth without looking at Sparx.

Chaos spoke again, struggling to pronounce the alien syllables. Her arms gestured wildly in the air in movements uncharacteristic to her as she attempted some version of sign language that Sparx couldn't make out.

Sparx raised a hand to lean against the green walls. Talking like this was _boring_, and when were they going to be able to get out of the forest?

To her surprise, the substance yielded under her hands, and she fell flat onto the ground.

_Lady Illusion's people. Should've guessed it'd not be real._

"It's an illusion. What the heck is going on?" She got to her feet, staring at the elf who had cast the spell. "Why _bother_ to try to imprison us behind some green-sheety thing that doesn't exist anyway? We weren't planning on going anywhere anyway!"

Vincenza flung her a glare. 'Try not to interrupt, my dear. Especially when you don't understand what your betters are discussing." She addressed the elves then, in a stream of what sounded like extremely fluent elvish.

"_Betters_?" Sparx folded her arms. "Whatever's going on here, I want out!"

"I'll explain later, Knight." Chaos glared at her. "Until then, would you mind staying out of trouble?"

"It'd be easier if people _explained_," Sparx said. "And I'm still waiting for that."

"Chaos said she would explain later," Kellamy said, his expression just as cold as the others'. "Until then, try to blend in." He took a step forward, and said something to the woman in the centre, raising his hands in a gesture that reminded Sparx of the standard Knight surrender posture.

_Great. Like I've _ever_ blended in._

She had the urge to bring out her sword and demand an explanation, _now_, because things in this dimension had gone on far too long without one, but half her audience wouldn't even understand her, and she knew Ace wouldn't have approved of her losing her temper.

The elf who had created the illusion raised her hand again, and a long green ribbon seemed to unwrap itself from her hand into the air, heading for Kellamy, who didn't look surprised.

"Um, what's that doing?" Sparx asked. It wrapped itself around Kellamy's wrists and drew them behind his back.

"You don't listen, do you?" Vincenza said quietly. "He told you they'd hardly welcome him due to past crimes."

"So is this the bit where we attack?" She'd rescued him the first time she'd turned up in this world. Knight or no Knight, she had responsibilities, and hopefully butt to kick. And having your wrists twisted like that probably kinda hurt, even if you just seemed to be waiting patiently for whatever was going to happen next.

"No, it is _not_. Do be quiet."

"I didn't bring myself here, and I'll speak for myself." She was aware that she was losing it, but in the face of the ghost's insults that didn't matter. She didn't have to put up with this any more.

"Sparx." Kellamy turned his head to look at her. "I have to do this. Please don't make them attack you."

"And cue applause for a rather decent rendering of the martyr's role," Vincenza added.

The elven woman with the sword stepped forward, and unclipped Kellamy's own sword from his belt.

"What is the mortal saying? If the shoe fits…?" Kellamy flashed Vincenza a smile. "Not that the part of maiden-in-distress generally suits me, of course, though depending on the prospective rescuer in question…"

"We will get you out of there," Chaos said. She said something more in elvish, which the elves seemed to agree to.

Kellamy shrugged, and displayed no sign of resistance as the elf untangled his braid and let the small collection of lockpicks fall onto her hand.

"Before or after you've explained things?" Sparx couldn't resist arguing. "They're Dark Elves, what do you think they're going to do to him?"

"Nothing Knights would not do," came a new female voice from behind them. "My Standard is probably _far_ superior to your elvish," a woman said, approaching from behind. "Chaos, queen of fruitless battle, a spirit I don't recognize—if I might, I would request conversation with you—a human in what looks like out-of-date Knight uniform, and of course our own rebel. Hoped you wouldn't be back," she added to Kellamy. "But I was the only one available to claim blood-right, and, you know how these things happen…"

"Eminently well," he replied.

She ignored him, and flung a quick command at the elf still holding his possessions. "What are you after? I'll translate. They call me Lady Shrew." She took a step back to catch Kellamy's gear, almost missing the catch in a none-too-graceful move. Whatever her reasons for sounding so confident, she wasn't a fighter, Sparx decided, and the name suited her.

"I couldn't begin to fathom why," Vincenza said. "Now, if you'll allow me…"

She started talking in elvish again, and Sparx sighed. Were they _ever_ going to get out of there?

"Look, can we do something other than just_ talk_?" she said to the woman calling herself Lady Shrew.

She shrugged, and joined in the discussion.

"Our battle is anything other than fruitless," Chaos said. Electricity crackled around her, and her harsh voice cut through her Vincenza's animated conversation. Something about her at that moment reminded Sparx very much of Ace. "We come here standing against the Knights and the human world, in power and in respect. Do you grant us entry or not?"

There was some slight hesitation from the elves, and then Sparx saw a black rock behind them start to shift position, revealing a tunnel underneath.

"So…that was a yes?" Sparx followed the rest of them towards the tunnel.

"For now, human. Don't take it for granted." Lady Shrew laughed, in a way that reminded Sparx somewhat uncomfortably of Lady Illusion.

* * *

"Quickest route to the Darkholt's north sixty-two degrees," Louisa called. 

"We can _see_ it," Tim called back. He hardly ever bothered to look at navigation guides and maps, anyway, and this place was familiar enough to him. "It's protected, though. Mage-wards." He'd heard the stories as a child, about what the Dark Elves did to any one that wandered too close. "And the Light Elves wouldn't like it very much either," he added, "though they're the good guys." He'd had a warning from the Light Elves once, years ago.

"Either we break through the wards or use our influence as Knights," Louisa called.

"If we take a thirty-degree turn and take a slightly roundabout route we can avoid trespassing on anyone's territory." Avraam studied his own map, on a screen fixed into his wrist shielding.

"No. We don't waste time," Louisa said.

Tim shared a brief glance with Avraam, and turned back to watching the forest disappear beneath them. They'd catch up to Chaos in no time.

"What's that—" Tim began, seeing a slender green strand reach up above the trees. "Lou!" he called as it snapped itself around her leg.

"What…" Avraam started to ask.

"Just hurry!" Tim forced the flyer towards their friend.

"Wait, it could be…"

Tim felt the jerk as the flyer was pulled down by another strand—not tree-material, but something sending jolts of not-quite-electricity through them.

"A trap?" he said.

"Precisely," Avraam replied dourly as the ground rushed up to meet them.

* * *

"What were you talking about?" Sparx asked Chaos in an undertone. The elven domains didn't impress her so far, she decided; dark firelit tunnels were _so_ last century when it came to lair choice. 

"As far as I understand it, after I spoke of our cause to the Lady Cobweb, the ghost had a nice cosy chat about the value of power before discussing how much the subjunctive casting tense had changed in three hundred years," Chaos said.

"Oh. Boring." Sparx rolled her eyes. "How do you know the language, anyway? Random—he's the guy on my world like you—doesn't." It was the language of sorcery which turned all speech to evil; at least, so she'd been told.

"Time and study. I thought I would need it."

"Yeah." Sparx paused for a second. "Um, since there isn't much time to study, is there some sort of translator-gadget I could get?"

"I'd assume so," Chaos said brusquely. "But for now, keep silent."

"Fine." Sparx' boot scuffed along the floor of the cave. "I'm _trying_, all right? I know life here kind of sucks from what I've seen—" _not that much more than my life_, she thought, but didn't say it—"and I'm trying not to let anyone else get hurt."

"Then listen to me and stay out of trouble," Chaos said.

Sparx looked up to see a large round tube glowing a soft silver ahead of them. "What's that?"

An elf in front of them turned around to say a few words to Chaos.

"Transport," she said to Sparx.

Vincenza floated back from her conversation with Lady Shrew to join them. "Would you object if I joined you later?" she said, sounding almost cheery. "So much to see, you know how it is, and _some_ people appear to respect the voice of Destiny…"

"I won't stop you," Chaos replied.

"Yeah. Go for it," Sparx said, trying and failing to hide a note of jubilation from her voice. "I'd hate to hold you back or anything."

Ahead, the elf in the elaborate dress—_Lady Cobweb_ was how Chaos had referred to her, and Sparx could see silvery patterns on her dress resembling the namesake—stroked the tube, which glowed for an instant.

"Where's that going to take him?" Sparx asked as Kellamy, flanked by the other two elves, disappeared into it.

"A temporary prison. Come on." They were next to enter the tube.

"Prison? _What_?" Sparx demanded, as she felt the teleportation take effect and tumbled out onto what felt like carpet.

"I couldn't leave him to the Knights, and I'm not going to start a fight with the elves unless I have to," Chaos said. "He's fine."

"Where I come from we don't leave our teammates in prison," Sparx said. _Only evils._

"Would you, Knight? If you had no other choice?"

"Yes," Sparx said defiantly. "But hey. You're the one who speaks the language." She turned around to look at where they'd ended up.

The room was recognizable as someone's idea of a living space, though Sparx couldn't identify the dingy-looking materials covering the walls and the floor. More torches hung on the walls, and there was a single, sputtering mage-light in the centre. A hanging lying slightly opened led the way to what looked like a bedroom, and in front of her a door that seemed to be made of some metallic substance was barred.

"They locked us in?" Sparx walked over to the door and tried to push it open. "We're prisoners too, aren't we?"

Chaos walked over to stand next to her. "I could easily open this with my powers."

"Planning to do it sometime this year?" Sparx asked.

"Not yet. There is a time and a place for these things." Chaos walked over to a chair and sat down heavily, staring into space.

"Yeah, yeah, got it," Sparx said. "I'm gonna go see if elves have plumbing. Scope out the area."

**A/N**: Thanks to everyone who has so far reviewed. This chapter's been a long time coming due to my procrastination--I hope I've been able to get back into the swing of things.


	8. To Fight

** CHAPTER EIGHT: TO FIGHT  
**

**A/N:** As stated in the summary, I've picked up this fic after a long absence 'specially for Anna. I greatly appreciate all reviews, but I feel I've improved as a writer since I completed the previous seven chapters; concrit of them is certainly accepted, but it may not do much good. All feedback for this chapter is very welcome. :)

**The story so far:** Sparx has been summoned to another dimension, where familiar faces have changed. The powerful Lightning Knights of this world, Tim/TNT, Louisa and Avraam, are now after her as she runs to the Dark Elves with the rebels Chaos, Kellamy and Vincenza. Kellamy, an exile from the elves due to events in his past, has been taken into their custody, while Chaos pleads with them for sanctuary. The pursuing Knights have come to a recent downfall over a forest. The three-centuries-ancient ghost Vincenza still claims Sparx to be Destiny's Chosen One—but can she be trusted?

--

"Short," Tim muttered moodily, kicking at a stray treebranch and missing it. "No, I'll go with short cubed."

"How well do you know this area, Tim?" Louisa demanded. She struggled against the tree wrapped around her again, trying to use her powers to char it into firewood, but to no avail. She had repeated the fact of her identity as a Lightning Knight, to convince the Light Elves to allow them to continue in their mission, but the representatives of the fabled race of benevolent forest caretakers had not listened.

"They…um." Tim paused. It had been a long time since he had had reason to repeat his parents' warnings about just what happened if you wandered off from the mining areas, and what a woman called Isylen had once told him. "Really don't like people entering into their territory with weapons, and they're a bit upset about the mining."

_Bit upset_ was an understatement, he thought; but they were pacifists, and they didn't really have a choice but to let the humans use the forest they didn't need anyway, did they?

"There was a treaty," Louisa said. "A transfer of title and an agreement against antagonism. Why can't they see we're Knights?"

_Because you fired at them?_ Tim thought, but didn't say it aloud. He would have done the same if Avraam hadn't fallen on top of him and prevented him from fighting. "It's…their land," he said. "But you're right. They'll have to let us go sooner or later, unless they want the whole of Knight Command coming after them."

"We _lost_ them," Louisa said gloomily. "It'll be hard to find them if they were accepted into the Darkholt."

"It's an if," Tim pointed out. "_Kella_'s a weird one, we know that."

"I note the optimism." Avraam twisted his body around to look at them; Tim noticed with a sinking feeling that he was still bleeding from a deep cut in his shoulder.

--

Eight days. Over a _week_, and Chaos had left her alone locked in here yet_ again_ for yet _another_ long session with the elves which she never _told_ her anything about afterwards.

Sparx kicked at the walls, spitefully glad at the dark scuff-mark she left across the pale polished stone. Why wasn't she allowed some _action_, especially if Chaos' fight was so desperate?

The door opened; she looked up, expecting to see Chaos so she could give her a piece (several particularly choice pieces, in fact) of her mind, and saw instead the woman who'd been called _Shrew_, accompanied by Vincenza.

"What the oblivion do you want _now_?" she demanded of the ghost. "First you nag us about being Destiny's servant, and then you went off to discuss—subjunctive propositions or whatever it was!"

Vincenza sniggered rather nastily. "Chaos has been successful. She recommended we make an offer to you."

"What kind of offer?" Sparx asked.

"One combining _my_ sorcerous expertise with your…nature." The ghost let a hand drift towards her face, and withdrew it as though in contempt.

"As your 'chosen one'?"

"No, as the particularly inarticulate mortal come to trouble us," the Lady (and it was painful to use that word to refer to her) retorted.

Sparx held up her hands. "Hey, I could do with a trip out of here."

"Excellent." Vincenza smiled, but the expression only reminded Sparx that the woman happened to be a corpse.

--

"What do I have to do?" She had been led through various narrow and dark passages, as though the two of them were ashamed of taking her with them. Possibly they were, if Chaos hadn't been cleared—but if they were actually bothering to help her, what did _that_ mean?

"Eilian here happens to be rather fortunate in her ancestry," Vincenza said. "Not that it does her any _good_, you understand, there being a balance of power spread across almost all thirty-nine of the Clans."

A better name for the Shrew than _Lady_.

"It does me good enough," Eilian said. "But to rely on the ancestors only ever causes one failure."

"An attitude sparing mortal incompetence," Vincenza said. "Back in my day…"

"Okay, okay," Sparx said, cutting off what appeared to be rapidly developing into a long and fierce denunciation of the hierachial practices of Vincenza's time. "You want to do something to me that's got something to do with her ancestor. Got any specifics handy?"

Eilian tapped out a pattern on a seemingly blank area of rock next to them, and it slid open to reveal a hidden room walled with bookshelves and odd-looking apparatus. "Just a little something to help you learn the language, that's all," she said, and took a handkerchief between a pair of tongs, holding it out to Sparx. "It won't take long. Breathe into this."

Vincenza wouldn't want her chosen one harmed, and she _did_ need this done to her; Sparx gingerly accepted the proffered cloth, and held it against her face until black spots started to dance in front of her eyes and she disappeared into darkness.

--

Her mouth felt as though someone had packed it deeper 'n Ghost Canyon with cotton balls, and she was strapped to a table staring up at a dark ceiling.

Not the best awakening she'd ever had. She struggled, trying to break through the bonds; but it was useless, and she flopped back onto the table, resting.

Someone had to be around here; she opened her mouth to call, but no sound seemed to be coming out.

Was she still underground with the elves? She could imagine the layers of rock above her, the long distance to the surface. Or worse yet somehow with the Lightning Knights of this world—but the restraints were of a softer material than metal, and now she could see a little better the twisted patterns across the ceiling weren't Knightly either.

"I demand that you release me!" she suddenly yelled, and closed her mouth in surprise. She didn't sound anything like herself, and her mouth felt really weird. Kinda cold, like she'd just finished eating one of those ices she'd never really grown out of.

"Awake?" Vincenza floated into view. "And how do you feel?"

"Perfectly adequate, thank you. Would you care to explain—" She stopped herself. "What the oblivion did you do to me, you bitch?"

_That_ sounded a little more like herself. Still not quite the way she'd thought it, though. She frowned, trying to pick out what was wrong.

"Eilian, come here." Vincenza beckoned impatiently. "You see? Successful, as I promised."

Eilian's dark eyes looked down on her, almost contemptuously. "What has she absorbed?" she asked the ghost. "Anything close to the original's abilities?"

Vincenza shook her head. "Tongue, not brain or heart or memory. There was power in the object, though."

"Power that…" Eilian shook back her short hair. "I have enough power of my own," she said throatily. "I require no more of our past."

"Cease this!" Sparx broke in. "No! I mean, let me go, because I'm so gonna kill you!"

"Like this?" Eilian unexpectedly bent over her, tracing her arm just above the restraint. "Why don't you tell us how? All tied up like you are?"

Eilian, she decided, _definitely_ reminded her of Lady Illusion. In all possible negative ways.

She still hadn't even learned what they had done to her.

"Get away from me!"

"There's no need to pester the girl." Vincenza, though, floated uncomfortably close to her. "My dear," she said to her, "it's time for your explanation—summarised, of course, for the sake of your comprehension. There was once a queen of the elves they called Silvertongue, the last to rule, post mortem they preserved that part of her in the very same metal, Eilian is distantly related—and now that artifact is a part of you."

"You…mutilated me." There was still the faint taste of blood in her mouth, now she thought of it, and she had realised now that the language she spoke hadn't exactly felt like Standard as she formed her lips around the syllables and her mouth moved. "How much of me is her? Does this make me evil? Is it going to backfire on me in a really bad way?"

Thankfully, those last sentences at least seemed more her.

"Little, entirely up to you, and no. I think," Vincenza added unkindly, tapping a long finger against and through her spectral cheek.

Sparx thrust up against the restraints again.

"You're merely human, aren't you?" Eilian said. Blue light danced from her fingers to the leather straps. "I hardly needed precautions."

"Actually, I'm not."

It was as though a volcanic flame built within her; her sword materialised between her hands, and she sat up, finally freed. She grinned, noting the not-quite-so-cocksure look on Eilian's face with some glee.

"Jacob," the elf said.

_So they_ did_ know him in this world_, Sparx thought. He'd been one of Zoar's apprentices, the creator of various legendary sorcerous artefacts and about seven mage-blades; most of them were lost, or safely locked away due to their tendency to destroy most of those who attempted to use them.

"Yes. Sword of Jacob," Sparx said. "This one's bonded to _me_, when a bunch of nasties tried to steal ancient artefacts from the Knight museum and I stopped them." She was slightly conscious of the boastful edge to her voice, but if Eilian was going to keep the high-and-mighty attitude she was damn well going to prove herself. The sword flared in response to her mood, a pink glow tinting its edges.

"Brave of you, I'm sure." Eilian's smirk had returned, Sparx noticed in irritation. "Of course, for the Knights and their meagre opposition, that would be hardly a difficult task."

"Oh, she's somewhat more than you think," Vincenza said, sounding vaguely bored. "Perhaps the best choice for this purpose, in the long run."

She was carrying more energy than accustomed, Sparx noticed; her sword felt ready to blast out at any moment, dangerously uncontrolled.

They'd done this to her, as well.

"Can't you reverse it?" she burst out.

"And waste our efforts?" Eilian smirked. "Not a chance, mortal's get."

--

It had apparently been Chaos' turn to pace during her absence, and she said something unintelligible when she saw Sparx walking back through the door in Vincenza's company.

"I beg your—I mean, what?" she asked.

Chaos looked puzzled for a few seconds, and then replied in a manner she recognized. "You imbecile!" she said. "You were stupid to go off with those two; I had my reasons to refuse them!"

She too was speaking more clumsily than usual; Sparx briefly wondered if something had been done to her as well, before recalling that she was speaking a language Random had known nothing about. A language she knew now—_instead_ of her native tongue.

This so sucked.

"They said you recommended me!"

"I told them that I wasn't as much a fool as you strike me as! Turns out I was _right_." She turned to the ghost, scowling. "Tell me what you did."

Sparx stuck out her tongue.

"…Oh," Chaos said limply. "I suppose that was _one_ way of teaching her."

Vincenza smiled. "Now for your news, Chaos dear?" she suggested.

Chaos sighed. "Fine. I see you already know." She turned to Sparx. "I've succeeded. You and I will be free to move about here, with some protection from the Knights."

"What about Kellamy?" Sparx asked.

"That's where I'm going." Chaos took Sparx' arm with her metal hand. "Du Lac, feel perfectly free not to follow us."

--

She and Chaos walked as Vincenza obnoxiously floated, deeper in the earth along long winding passages; Chaos talked to what appeared to be a pair of elven guards for a while before they were permitted to pass, and then they opened a cell door to see Kellamy, in a tapestried room with a warm fire burning.

_Not exactly a miserable cell_, Sparx thought. He even had a bottle of some red substance in front of him, paired with a delicate glass filled with the same.

"Good to see you," Kellamy said, standing up from the table at which he had been sitting. He picked up the bottle. "Moriturus te saluto. May I offer you a glass of anything?"

"No." Chaos took it out of his hand, and then smashed it against the wall. "Pull yourself together."

Kellamy merely looked mildly nonplussed at her actions. "There is no need to be harsh," he said. "I simply wish to snatch whatever slight pleasures I can."

"You're drunk," Chaos said. "Idiot."

He insouciantly lounged back in his chair "What else am I to do, for now?"

"Prepare for the upcoming trial by combat," Chaos said. She thumped her metal hand on the table. "I'm not giving up. Don't you dare do the same."

Kellamy sighed. "I'll fight, of course; I look forward to it. Please assure me it's soon."

"What if you lose?" Sparx asked into the silence. She turned to Chaos. "You got us accepted; can't you do the same for him?"

Chaos shook her head. "I can't go against their law."

"Law can be changed," Sparx said. "It is frequently mutable; surely one of your influence could—"

She stopped her treacherous voice with not inconsiderable effort. "You'd better fight and win, Kellamy," she said, "and don't pretend otherwise."

--

Louisa watched as the elven woman kissed him.

"I'm glad to see you again," Tim said in her language, smiling at her after she'd finished. "I don't suppose you've come to a decision about us?"

She shook her head gravely, her long fair hair pooling around her shoulders, answering him in the same language. "The Knights do not seem to have realised you're here yet, though they have sent observers to the Darkholt."

She pointed to the skies, where the Knights had been depressively watching the odd observation vehicle travelling across it.

Tim sighed, his shoulders drooping miserably. "I did save you once, Isylen," he said.

"Patience, boy," she told him, patting his shoulder. "And farewell, for now."

She melted away from him like snowfall, leaving them alone once again; Avraam stared at his teammate, but was apparently too polite to make any remarks.

"What was that about?" Louisa asked for him.

Tim shrugged. "There's not really much to tell. My dad was a miner, so I grew up around here, and one day decided to, uh, go exploring on my own."

"To disobey rules, you mean," Louisa said indulgently.

"So I met her," Tim said, "and she said she could help me back to the human camp. But when we were nearly there, there was a logchipper gone rogue—and that's when I found out about my powers, and got to rescue her." He shrugged. "You learn a few things about elves, around the mines. Too bad it's not helping that much now."

"Patience, Tim." Louisa repeated Isylen's words. "Trust me. They will not keep us here for an eternity."

Avraam sighed, leaning back and closing his eyes; he still looked in poor condition, worsened by their days spent covered only by the canopy of trees, and Tim wrapped a hand around his teammate's forearm for whatever comfort that would offer.

--

It was a pretty good training session.

She smiled as she battled him, skilfully and what was more important, _silently_; she'd managed to push him to a point beyond talking, both of them panting as they continued to duel.

He wasn't bad; a bit stiff from his recent experiences, perhaps, but with a distinct technique and style to her, plus some moves she hadn't seen before.

She leaped towards him, using one of her faster blade-sequences; he seemed to unexpectedly fall back before her, until he teleported out of the way and she had to quickly dodge as he attacked from behind.

So he wanted to use powers? Fair enough. She focused on her sword, and it started to glow; sparks struck off his blade as she forced him back, step by step. She could almost have broken him in two, powered up like this. She felt stronger than usual; an actually-welcome side effect, perhaps. But he was still fast and quite skilled, and avoided her nicely enough.

An excellent training session.

"You win," he said eventually as she _moved_, feeling more sure of herself than at any moment since she'd come here, fighting in that way that always felt as though she was connected to all the dimensions in the multiverse, perfectly confident in her powers and abilities.

"What?"

He stepped aside, unexpectedly; in her lunge, she almost ran into a wall before turning back to him.

"Powers," he said. "You're stronger than me, with or without; let's do without, if you don't object."

"Fine by me," she replied. She grinned as they started again, keeping herself quiet; this was _good_.

They were confined in the space, observed by Chaos with an elven guard posted on the door; a fairly small room with an uncomfortably low ceiling, but useful enough for their practice. Lucky for Kellamy that his imprisonment was on very generous terms.

_Aristo_.

She fought on; it had been such _ages_ since she'd had action like this, not having to run any more but standing and fighting.

He would've picked up popular approval in one of the Knight competitions, his style flamboyant and showy; she might have seen it as _treacherous_, hiding where his next move came from, but the underlying patterns beneath his moves were anything but. If he wasn't so much about the show…

She hit him three times in quick succession, small taps on his shoulders; smugly, she forced him against the wall and battled him there. He lasted; _dazzling_, really, was another word for how he fought, pretty patterns; but in the end she won out, and disarmed him.

He smiled at her, somewhat wearily. "You're very good. Thank you."

"For what?" She gestured to the sword on the ground, not wishing to say any more.

"I—don't know how much good your efforts will do," he said softly, leaning back against the stone wall.

"Hey, don't back out like that. It's been ages since I got to fight like this!" _Do not cease; I find this marvellously entertaining, _she didn't want to be so pompous as to actually _say_.

"You seem to favour your right side," he said thoughtfully as they resumed, dodging a lunge and returning it with his own, more subtle, strike.

"So what's with the extra wrist movements in that—" she paused—"Greymalkin's Jab?"

The elven phrase had come in response to her mental picture, a move named after some lord she'd never even _heard_ of.

"You consider this more efficient?" A modified Greymalkin's without the extra shimmer; she defended her left side, blocking him as it was her turn to pace backwards. "Yeah. Better—but not good enough." She lunged forward, on the attack once more.

"Your _finta in tempo _is a trifle sloppy."

"You are more reluctant to go for the kill than I—I know how to _finish_ things, Zoardamnit!"

"You're more passionate in attack than defence."

"I'm still stronger than you. Ha!"

"Does this qualify as a passionate finish?"

"Not really, I'm not down yet. Come and get it!"

"A feint in quinte? Quite shabby."

"Shabby _this_, elf-boy!"

She had him, against the wall, facing each other in corps-a-corps as they glared at each other, neither budging a Kyrilian centimetre.

"That's enough," Chaos said finally, clapping her hands to get their attention. "You don't need to drain yourselves."

Sparx stepped back from him, making her weapon dematerialise. "That was—" _exhilarating, illuminating, pleasurable— _"fun!"

Kellamy placed his sword in the wall-holder, and drew a hand across his forehead. "Very warm," he said, slipping off his shirt; Sparx rather wished she could do the same. Turtlenecks had their disadvantages.

"Oh yes. Sweat rather suits you."

They both turned to see Vincenza watching them, inaudibly clapping in the air; Sparx scowled, crossing her arms across her chest. "What the oblivion do you want _now_?"

"Who said I was addressing _you_?" Vincenza answered, and turned to Kellamy.

Sparx wasn't sure whether to feel insulted or relieved. "Do you have something else to say, or are you going to waste your time in gawking?"

"I appreciate talented—swordsmanship; is that not enough?" She laid a transparent hand on Kellamy's arm; he laughed good-naturedly.

"The voyeuristic advantages of ectoplasm?" he said.

"I find great art has as much impact on me, without the benefit of hormones—but perhaps you would agree that some beings count as both?"

"Yourself, milady?" he asked gallantly. "You've mentioned admirers in your own time, I believe. Now, as to your recent deeds with—"

Sparx gave a loud yawn. "Talk about mutual appreciation society," she said loudly, talking to Chaos.

Vincenza looked up at Sparx. "Now you mention it, I went through enough men in my time—I'm sure _you_ could be worth admiring in an appropriate setting. Several baths, ridiculously expensive dress, paper bag over your head…"

Kellamy shot Sparx an apologetic look. "Thanks for the fight," he said. "One thing I wanted to tell you—"

"It's time to end this." The guard, returning; they hadn't noticed him, facing Vincenza.

"Your words are different. _You_ haven't changed," he said to her as he was led away. "Chaos, I'll try not to fail you."

Vincenza watched him leave.

"Will he win, oh voice of Destiny?" Chaos asked.

The ghost shrugged. "Stop worrying. I know what you're doing."

She didn't look as convinced as she might have been, Sparx thought. The pervert dead girl and the elf who seemed pretty worried himself—

—wait, elf and dead…_ghost_. Dead ghost who'd died three hundred and something years ago. Dead ghost who fancied herself a sorceress—

"Lord Fear!"

--

Louisa had been chatting to them for _hours_, leaving him and Avraam still tied up at the back of the cave, and Tim felt quite exceptionally annoyed that she had ordered his silence, when after all _he_ was the one with (a certain meagre; you damn well learned the local lingoes if you were going to live around here) experience.

Then again, she was meant to do the talking, he reflected. It was inaction that got to him, not wanting to speak in particular; give him a chance and he'd _fight_, winning back what the rebels had done to him and his friends.

After they'd scrounged through the wreckage of Avraam's flyer for the remnants of the med-kit, of course; he looked like he could do with at least a powerup.

And then there were the final formalities, from what he could hear; a sulky-looking Louisa was escorted back to them, and then they left them in the dark.

"What's gonna happen, Lou?" he asked.

"They're sending us back to the Knights. Away from our mission." She frowned. "I'll find a way to rescue us. I promise."

_Sending us back_. Didn't sound so bad on the face of it. Then again, he'd heard rumours, in the mines.

--

Vincenza shrugged. "A rather decent codename, m'dear—my world-equivalent, I presume? Who was I, then, without the ridiculous bonds of society keeping me shackled?"

"He's a skeleton coming close to taking over the world," Sparx said coldly. "Which is _nothing_ to be proud of."

The ghost hugged herself jubilantly, her arms passing through her dress. She looked oddly girlish and young. "I knew it! I knew I was destined for greatness!"

"This means—"

_She's Lord Fear! What is she trying to do? What does she _want?

But the rest of them were different, sort of. Kellamy, for one. But…

Vincenza paused in the air. "I've helped you here, of course," she said. "I _want_ you to win this!"

_Don't trust her._

"Then what will we do after Kellamy wins?" Chaos asked.

Vincenza smiled. "I'll tell you," she said, and disappeared again through the door.

"Don't trust her," Chaos said, turning to Sparx; and she thanked Zoar that Chaos agreed with her on this one.

--

A faint sound, but enough to wake him; he looked up, blinking in the dark, and saw Isylen, accompanied by another elf.

"Be quiet," she whispered to him. "I've heard the news. My brother decided to make you an alternative offer."

"I'm listening," said Louisa.

"Isylen does not always agree with my methods," the other elf said, his silvery eyes seeming to gleam faintly in the dark. "But needs must forge allies—and I believe we have a lot to learn from some human methods. Considering the alternative…"

"_Explain_, Jenlen," Isylen said icily.

He looked momentarily embarrassed. "All right. We'll use your powers to teleport you to the foes you seek. Fight the Dark Elves for us and we'll be able to take some of their territory." He turned to Louisa. "You're the leader?"

She nodded.

"In return, you'll sign a contract for the Knights for us to retain lands not yet taken by your mining."

"All that, for a little signature," Louisa said thoughtfully. "That's really all you want?"

He clenched his fists. "The land is important to us, human. But you're right we'll want more eventually. When we convince more to start thinking like us and _do_ more than sit here meditating about peace."

"Then I'll willing," Louisa said. "Provided you free my hands."

She freed Tim and Avraam as the siblings conferred, Jenlen whispering to others through a transparent disc he formed in his hands.

"Wanna-be violent elf revolutionaries," Tim said quietly to her. "Didn't know there was such a thing."

"You could go with the other elves," Louisa said. "Get your powers stripped from you and forced back to Londres headquarters—with no guarantee your mind goes with you."

Tim shuddered. _Looks like some of the stories were true._ "Nope, I prefer violence."

"Good." Louisa reached to her utility belt; though they'd been searched, the battery pack she kept in there had been left. "Avraam, fix yourself up."

"We'll make sure you have as much energy as possible," Isylen said, returning to them. She knelt beside Tim, leaning closely towards him. "I might not see you again."

"Yeah. If that's so, I'll miss you," he said as her face moved towards his. "Same with this girl back home, Brenda…"

She drew back from him, looking vaguely disgusted.

"She left you a semicycle ago," Louisa pointed out maliciously. "First loves often remain with us, Tim…"

"…I meant Betsy. Sorry, I'm hopeless with names," he added. It was truthful; he hadn't meant to name the wrong girl, but as a well-known Knight there wasn't much shortage of women in his life. They just didn't _stay_ in his life for very long.

She laughed, and stood in a rustle of robes. "We'd better go now, then," she said. "The spell will build up, and then activate. Wait for it."

A glowing network of golden lines surrounded them, then blinked into invisibility as the elves disappeared.

--

_Aschylon of clan Silke_ was his opponent's name, Sparx could understand now, and there Kellamy was, approaching the Arena, slightly pale but looking confident enough.

He would probably need that; Aschylon was tall and muscular, and resembled a well-polished piece of granite in the smoothness and strength of his movements.

Sparx saw a tall elven woman step towards Kellamy from the rest of them, and say something softly to him. Chaos watched, impassively, and to the back Vincenza floated some distance above the spectators.

The woman faded back into her group; Sparx looked back at Kellamy to see him falter, slightly, paler now as he walked to the centre of the Arena.

_I would have won_, he had boastfully claimed. It didn't look like that now.

He and Aschylon stood facing each other, in the centre of a circle marked with a red outline; they paused like that for a long moment, and then Kellamy was the first to draw his sword. Aschylon followed suit, and an instant later Sparx blinked as bright light crossed the room. When she opened them, she saw that a translucent dome had centred around the fighters, formed atop the red outline; they'd be trapped there, she guessed, until it was over.

_Talk about pressure!_

But the voice-of-Destiny had said that Kellamy'd win, and maybe she ought to _know_, even if her orders were about as trustworthy as the _Daily Thunder_'s gossip page. Sparx made herself settle down, watching the fight; Kellamy _wasn't_ as bad as he was looking right now, though Aschylon was definitely good.

_Definitely_ good, she thought again, watching him drive Kellamy back in a series of quick, sharp thrusts that belied his size in their speed. But surely Kellamy was bluffing…

She looked again across the room to the woman who had spoken to him, but couldn't quite pick her out from the others there. Turning her attention back to the duel, Kellamy was continuing to be beaten; and then the first cut, pale blue-green appearing across his collarbone.

He stepped back, glancing down at the blood; it seemed to give him resolve, and he fought back, lunging at Aschylon and forcing him into a more even battle.

For a while. He was taller and stronger, and Kellamy seemed to be wearying; another cut opened across his arm, and he even stepped back, granting Kellamy a moment as he recovered.

_Bad match_, Sparx thought. Like—like putting Ace or Random up against the whole lot of minions, when though they'd be brave and fight, in the end it just wasn't going to _work_.

Another cut, across his cheek, accompanied by laughter from the elves. She risked a glance at the ghost; Vincenza had one arm folded around her waist, tapping her fingers on her other arm.

Worried, too. Sparx clenched her fists, feeling suddenly very helpless.

_Bad to begin with. Either it's kill or be killed in this—and it looks like it's not gonna be the nicer one of those._

She could save her friends, normally. But she wasn't even sure if she could have beaten this guy.

She'd just have to hope. As though in response to that, Kellamy lunged forward, wildly; not a _good_ strike, not neat or elegant the way she'd seen him fight before, but effective; he opened a cut on Aschylon's shoulder, near his neck.

Aschylon looked surprised, as though (and probably) he'd never expected anything of the kind; he returned to the attack, and blood temporarily blinded Kellamy as Aschylon's strike scraped across his nose.

It was slow, and brutal; Sparx placed her hand to her mouth, biting down on her forefinger. He hadn't rallied, exhausted by now from the wounds continuing to be inflicted on him; he moved wildly, showing no trace of the showy grace that characterised him in a fight.

He was…doomed. Chaos looked as concerned as Vincenza, and as though scenting the blood, the watching elves moved closer, waiting for the climax.

And then she saw him look up, his attention taken from the fight at that crucial moment; she vaguely perceived a bright flash of blue, but watched in horror as he failed to block Aschylon as he stabbed him in the side, falling to the bloodied ground as gently as though he was flying.

Aschylon glanced up, and then raised his sword to strike the final blow; she had placed her hands on the dome as though she could force her way through with her bare hands, and then materialised her sword, whispering _open_ in the language she did not know.

The dome shattered around her, a sharp maze of broken glasslike shapes, and she rushed to fight, noticing dimly that it reformed as Aschylon prepared to meet her.

"This should not be your fight, human!" he said to her, the first time she'd heard him speak. "Battle what's outside!"

She couldn't see much out there, something rushing; but Chaos could fight there while she dealt with this.

"Of course it's my fight! He's my friend!"

_Fellow fugitive whose previous save of she wasn't going to nullify_, if she wanted to be grim about it—but she'd come to _know_ him and the others, somewhat, and damned if she was going to let him bleed to death here.

"Loyalty at the cost of honour, Knight?"

He was as good as he'd seemed; but she was fresh, and held her own against him.

"I'm not gonna let him die!"

"Then die with him; quite frankly, I don't care."

He was on her, fighting like one of Zoar's Devils; she stood her ground, though, and powered up her sword.

_I have to do this._

She knew how to finish things. Zoardamnit.

She saw Aschylon's panicked eyes as her sword went up and under his ribs, and withdrew it bloody as he fell to the ground. As dead as any minion she'd fought.

Sparx turned to see that the barrier had disappeared, most elves gone but a few remaining with Chaos to fight against the Knights.

And closer to her, Tim, pulling Kellamy up by the hair as he held his sword to his throat.

--

Time seemed to slow to a crawl.

"Leave him alone," she said coldly.

Tim smiled. "Surrender first."

She looked to Chaos, battling Louis and Avraam with the help of some of the elves.

"Maybe he'll bleed to death anyway," Tim said, pulling his head up by his braid; Kellamy seemed only vaguely aware of what was going on. "You shouldn't care about the Zoar-cursed freaks."

"I advised you to release him!" she cried (_damn voice!_), and then Vincenza swept through the Knight; in that instant of distraction, she pushed him back, beyond the red border.

She fought alongside Chaos, against the Knights and above the bodies of fallen elves; she'd _kill_ them.

"Better this way!" Her alternate lunged toward her, smiling in a way she remembered feeling like herself, and she let herself fight.

This was, after all, why she _liked_ being the person she was.

"Destroying you will be most—pleasurable!"

_Shit._

Still, it seemed to confuse him long enough for her to get the upper hand for the time being.

"So what's with the language upgrade?" he asked. "We're supposed to be fighters not nerds, I only know it from growing up near here! You're destroying our _rep_!"

"…And that's all you'll destroy," he concluded grimly, forcing her back.

She needed an advantage, like five minutes ago.

They fought, testing each other's strength and skill; she tried moves she'd seen Kellamy use, and he beat her back with things _she_ didn't do, as though he'd figured out what her dimension had trained her to become.

The red border, below her feet. If she timed it just right she…

She retreated beyond it, daring him to come to her; and as he stepped across she dived down, rolling across the floor as the dome materialised for an instant around him, and flung him into Louisa as Chaos snapped one of Avraam's sais in two with her metal hand.

And then it was just her and Chaos, back-to-back against the three Knights; she saw Kellamy slowly get to his feet, stumbling; Louisa blasted him, and he fell next to other elves.

Maybe she'd failed, after all.

Chaos reached out and grabbed Louisa, stealing energy from her body; Louisa reeled back as she threw her down.

"Like old times, Virus?" she said, activating close-quarter blasts as she fought.

Chaos shook her head. "I'd never go back."

"The same here!" Louisa almost screamed.

Sparx was beating Tim, now, with Chaos holding her own against the other two. Louisa smiled a deaths-head grin, and materialised a glowing blue shield around herself and her teammates.

"Until later, Chaos."

They disappeared in the lightning field; Sparx stepped back, and wiped a hand over her forehead. Chaos quickly stepped aside, and she went with her; they both bent over Kellamy as he lay there, staring into the face of an elven woman who looked as though she might have been sleeping.

"I suppose I should tell you the truth now," he said, looking up at Sparx. He slowly reached up a hand to touch hers. "You…shouldn't have saved me, perhaps. When I duelled with her brother before, I cheated to try to kill him—"

His voice trailed off, the hand slack in hers. He didn't seem to be breathing any more.

"Jerk!"

She smashed her fist into the ground. All she could do.

"Sparx! Repeat after me—_to call on dark Zaita, suspension in the abyss_."

The voice was authoritative; as though it compelled her, Sparx said the words, and then thought.

"Damn ghost, short it—why didn't you warn all this would happen!" What had she done _now_, to obey her?

"All I can do is apologise." She actually looked shaken, but that wasn't good enough for someone who called themselves the voice of bloody Destiny. "I helped you with Timothy, and then gave you the sorcerous incantation to speak to save him, to prove myself; you should know by now that it's not him who matters in this!"

He was surrounded by a faint green, apparently frozen in time like some legendary figure. Sparx raised a hand to her mouth.

"I think people always matter," she said, looking at the death around her. She drew her knees to her chest, staring into the distance as though she could see the sky beyond the dark caves. "It's why I became a Knight."

--


End file.
